COP28 side event - Investing in the future: Transforming financing for the Paris Agreement and development goals

A COP28 Side Event Organized by UNCTAD and UNDP

This event will reflect on recent discussions on transforming the financial system to meet climate goals, while demonstrating the power of investing in NDCs for sustainable development.  It will explore ways to raise ambition for climate financing that build on, and inform, country experiences.

The world cannot meet the goals of the Paris Agreement and 2030 Agenda without a rapid alignment and scaling-up of finance. Motivated by compounding climate, economic and geopolitical crises, 2023 saw an active global conversation on the need for far-reaching reform of the global financial architecture to respond to contemporary challenges. The June 2023 Paris Summit delivered a two-year roadmap for action on global financial architecture reform, which highlights key convenings from the World Bank Group’s Annual Meetings to COP28 to the United Nations Financing for Development Forum where these debates will continue to take place.

At the same time, developing countries are taking bold steps to respond to the increasingly intense and immediate impacts of climate change, leveraging their NDCs to help drive investment in climate action and development priorities. Nonetheless, unsustainable debt, unaffordable financing, and volatile financial flows are squeezing fiscal and policy space for climate-resilient just transitions. For developing countries to deliver on their NDCs and achieve wider development goals, further progress is necessary to scale financing with the common goal of prosperity for all. The African Climate Summit held in September 2023, among other things, deliberated on these challenges and in the Nairobi Declaration that resulted from the summit, proposed a new financing architecture responsive to Africa's needs including debt restructuring and relief, and the development of a new Global Climate Finance Charter through the United Nations General Assembly and the COP processes by 2025.

From clean energy to resilient food systems, scaling-up finance requires new and innovative approaches at both global and national levels. This event will be an opportunity to:

• hear countries’ successes and challenges in financing climate action,
• reflect on different proposals for the global financial architecture reform that would support and complement these national experiences to scale-up successes and address challenges, and
• identify urgent priorities for action to ensure progress serves the needs and priorities of all developing countries.

Speakers to be confirmed.