Improving access to climate finance for scaling up climate resilience

OPM’s Katherine Cooke presenting at the global climate finance conference in Bangladesh

Climate change is the most pressing challenge the world is facing today. It is of vital importance that governments worldwide are able to implement policies that address current development needs, as well as mitigate the effects of climate change and successfully reduce and manage disaster risks.

All actions that governments can take to protect their citizens from climate effects, or scale up the resilience of their cities, however, require funding. Climate finance is a difficult area for international development, and was a contentious issue at the recent 24th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP24). During two week negotiations in Poland, countries worked on improving rules for reporting past and future commitments, as well as setting a new climate finance goal beyond the current target of $100 billion a year after 2025.

As such, climate finance issues remain at the forefront for policymakers and climate experts. The Second International Conference on Climate Finance (ICCF), taking place between 9 and 10 March, in Dhaka, Bangladesh, is bringing together national and international researchers, practitioners, policymakers, and private sector representatives to share their experiences on current and future climate finance issues.

Katherine Cooke, senior consultant in our Climate Change and Disaster Risk team, will be speaking at two panel discussions during the conference, highlighting challenges and opportunities to access funds for adaptation and mitigation and exploring options for strengthening climate finance mechanism, focusing in particular on recent initiatives in Bangladesh.

Specialising in climate finance, Katherine will share OPM’s work and expertise in this area, building on our work in managing Action on Climate Today (ACT) programme to mainstream climate change into policy making across four countries in South Asia.

In Bangladesh, ACT worked on scaling up the capacity of civil society actors, including NGOs, think tanks, and journalists, to help raise transparency and accountability of the Government’s work on climate budgeting, and increasing climate-resilient agriculture, focusing on cotton cultivation to enhance income security of small farmers.

For low- and middle-income countries, which are often the worst affected by climate change impacts, it is crucial to improve resilience against climate shocks, particularly in urban areas. One option to achieve this is through funding available through the Green Climate Fund (GCF), a financing mechanism under the UNFCCC. However, one key issues countries struggle with is how to demonstrate the likelihood of a paradigm shift. Helping to improve the access for low- and middle-income countries, we are developing a framework for measuring achieved transformation.

Find out more about our work on climate change and connect with Katherine ahead of the conference.

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