Investing in the future: Transforming financing for the Paris Agreement and Development Goals

Join us on the livestream here.

Moderator: Mr. Richard Kozul-Wright, Director, Division on Globalization and Development Strategies, United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD)

Speakers:

• H. E. Ms. Sigrid Kaag, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance, Kingdom of the Netherlands
• Mr. Mahmoud Mohieldin, Executive Director at the International Monetary Fund, a U.N. Special Envoy on Financing the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda, and a U.N. Climate Change High-Level Champion for COP27
• Ms. Mariana Mazzuccato, Professor, Economics of Innovation and Public Value at University College London
• H.E. Ms. Tania Romualdo, Permanent Representative of the Republic of Cabo Verde to the United Nations   
• Dr. Noor Syaifudin, Senior Policy Analyst of Fiscal Policy Agency, Ministry of Finance Republic of Indonesia   
• Ms. Cassie Flynn, Global Director of Climate Change, UN Development Programme (UNDP)  

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: 

1. Hear countries’ successes and challenges in financing climate action, 
2. 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 
3. Identify urgent priorities for action to ensure progress serves the needs and priorities of all developing countries. 

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 conversation on reform that started with the Bridgetown Initiative launched by Prime Minister Mia Mottley of Barbados in July 2022 were built upon and continued with the June 2023 Paris Summit, which delivered a two-year roadmap for action on global financial architecture reform, highlighting 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.