The two-week long international climate summit was due to end on Friday 18 2022, but will continue on Saturday November 19, to allow delegates extra time to negotiate on divisive aspects of the draft agreement – greenhouse gas emissions and loss and damage.
The draft agreement calls on the World Bank and other multilateral development banks “to reform their practices and priorities”, align their spending with climate goals and “significantly increase climate ambition using the breadth of their policy and financial instruments for greater results”. It also calls for $4 trillion of annual investment in renewable energy by 2030, with an aggregate $5.6tn in additional funding to enable developing countries to meet their climate-related goals this decade.
Speaking about the draft decision, Laurence Tubiana, chief executive officer of the European Climate Foundation, reportedly commented: “The moment is right. Climate impacts are beginning to be understood as a macroeconomic risk.”
The draft text also describes a new finance goal for November 2024 to provide the $100 billion annual in climate-related assistance to vulnerable countries, acknowledging that “substantive progress” is still needed for this ambition to be realised.
While most attention is on the intergovernmental negotiations on the draft agreement, other initiatives have been launched including four ‘solution-cantered’ initiatives for Africa:
- Friends of Greening National Investment Plans in Africa and Developing Countries initiative: aims at factoring in the impact of climate change when designing economic policies, quantifying mitigation and adaptation efforts, identifying the gaps and support needed, and proposing a set of essential guidelines, criteria, and policy advice, to expedite the implementation of the UNFCCC, Paris Agreement and the NDCs.
- Low Carbon Transport for Urban Sustainability (LOTUS) initiative: aims to activate systemic change to improve and decarbonize the urban mobility landscape, and will focus on improving access to low carbon and resilient urban mobility solutions and strengthening the foundational enablers of change as the first-order priorities.
- Sustainable Urban Resilience for the next Generation (SURGe) initiative: aims to reduce urban greenhouse gas emissions, adapt urban systems to climate change, and build urban system resilience. The initiative will track buildings and housing, urban water, urban mobility, urban waste and consumption, and urban energy.
- Global Waste Initiative 50 by 2050: aims to holistically address all solid waste types and contribute to an ambitious target at the scale of the African continent with a view to treating and recycling at least 50 percent of the solid waste produced in Africa by 2050.
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