Latest news with #FRLD
GMA Network
27-05-2025
- Business
- GMA Network
Marcos asks oil-rich Arab nations for contributions to Loss and Damage Fund
Security force members use an inflatable raft to bring residents to safety from a flooded area near the bank of the overflowing Bagmati River following heavy rains, in Kathmandu, Nepal, September 28, 2024. REUTERS/Navesh Chitrakar KUALA LUMPUR - Philippine President Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr. asked oil-rich Arab countries for contributions to the Loss and Damage Fund. During the 2nd ASEAN – Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) Summit, Marcos emphasized that climate change remains ''one of the most defining challenges of our time—not the most defining challenge of our time.'' ''Both our regions are climate vulnerable,'' Marcos said. ''Our populations face significant climate-related risks, such as sea level rise, rising temperatures, desertification, and loss of biodiversity, amongst others. As host of the Fund Corresponding to Loss and Damage, or FRLD, the Philippines would like to encourage contributions through that fund,'' he added. The member states of the GCC include Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. Marcos said the Philippines' hosting of the FRLD would accelerate the unhindered access of developing nations to climate finance. This shall help in the development and implementation of transformative and science-based strategies and initiatives for climate change adaptation, mitigation, and disaster risk management, Marcos said. Marcos has made a commitment to push for evidence-based solutions in addressing the impacts of climate change, adding that its unprecedented impact has the potential to disrupt communities and supply chains. The Philippines was elected to host the Loss and Damage Board in July 2024. The Loss and Damage Fund aims to provide financial assistance to vulnerable countries dealing with the devastating effects of climate change. — VBL, GMA Integrated News
Gulf Today
18-05-2025
- Business
- Gulf Today
NDCs must serve as national development blueprints: UAE
Abdulla Balalaa, Assistant Foreign Minister for Energy and Sustainability, led the United Arab Emirates (UAE) delegation to the Copenhagen Climate Ministerial, alongside ministers and climate leaders from around the world, to advance COP28's outputs and set the course towards COP30. Held from May 7-8, the meeting represents an important milestone, marking 10 years since the adoption of the Paris Agreement and the halfway point through the critical decade to keep the 1.5°C goal within reach. Balalaa represented the COP28 Presidency in the Troika High-Level Dialogue on Long-Term Development Planning, co-chaired by the COP28, COP29, and COP30 Presidencies. The session explored how Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) can serve as strategic instruments for sustainable development, investment mobilisation, and institutional resilience. 'As the initiators of the Troika Roadmap to Mission 1.5, the UAE firmly believes that NDCs must move beyond pledges. They must serve as national development blueprints – integrating investment, inclusion, and resilience,' said Balalaa during his intervention. On the sidelines of the meeting, Balalaa held several bilateral meetings with key partners, including the Minister of Climate Change of kingdom of Norway, Deputy Danish Minister of Energy, Climate, and Utilities; Denmark's Minister of Environment and Gender Equality. He also held several meetings with CEOs of private sector water & renewable energy companies such as Vestas the pioneer company in wind turbines, Copenhagen infrastructure partners (CIP), and AVK, one of the largest holding company in water solutions. In these engagements, Balalaa reaffirmed the UAE's commitment to leading the implementation of the Baku Climate Unity Pact, which includes initializing the Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage (FRLD) and advancing the New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG). Furthermore, the UAE emphasized its role as a climate finance pioneer, referencing its USD 100 million contributions to both the FRLD and the Global Flaring and Methane Reduction (GFMR) Fund, as well as the launch of the $30 billion ALTÉRRA platform to unlock transformational finance and catalyse private sector engagement. In addition, Balalaa highlighted the UAE's commitment to sustainable development through its co-hosting of the United Nations Water Conference 2026 (UNWC) alongside Senegal. This pivotal event will link water security, climate resilience, and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) with the goals of the Paris Agreement. The UAE views water action as inseparable from climate action and remains committed to driving global cooperation for a resilient and sustainable future for generations to come. This participation reflects the UAE's ongoing diplomatic efforts to build international support for global climate action, following the signing of the historic 'UAE Consensus,' reached at the 28th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP28), held in Expo City in Dubai in 2023. These endeavors aim to accelerate progress across adaptation, energy transition, and resilience in the lead-up to COP30, which will be held in Belém, Brazil the coming November. Recently, Balalaa led the UAE delegation at the Petersberg Climate Dialogue, where he participated at the annual meeting's high-level sessions, alongside the Federal Chancellor of Germany and several ministers. He also held a series of ministerial meetings in Berlin, reaffirming the UAE's commitment to international cooperation across climate action, energy transition, water resource management and sustainable development. During his visit, Balalaa met several prominent German and international officials, including Stefan Wenzel, Parliamentary State Secretary at the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action; Jochen Flasbarth, State Secretary at the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development; Eva Kracht, Director-General for International Affairs at the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety; and Simon Stiell, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). WAM
Observer
13-05-2025
- Business
- Observer
The world doesn't need another climate fund
Brazil has announced plans to launch a $125 billion fund for the protection of tropical forests. It is a key element of the country's plan to ensure the success of the next United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP30), which Brazil will host. But, at a time when some of the world's richest economies are slashing their foreign-aid budgets, and the United States is turning its back on climate action altogether, does the world really need another climate fund? Over the past three decades, more than 60 multilateral funds have emerged to raise financing for climate action in developing countries. Most are small and obscure, leaving around 19 sizable entities – including the Green Climate Fund (GCF), the Global Environment Facility (GEF), the Adaptation Fund (AF), and Climate Investment Funds (CIFs) – that publicly report on their activities. In theory, each entity serves a worthy purpose, and a few have gained some traction. In particular, the GCF has emerged as the second-largest multilateral provider of grant-based climate finance to the most vulnerable countries (after the World Bank). But, overall, their contributions are underwhelming. In 2021-22, the 19 funds tracked by the UN's Standing Committee on Finance delivered a mere $3.7 billion – roughly $195 million per fund. That is far less than the $55.7 billion that multilateral development banks collectively provided for climate action, and nowhere near the trillions of dollars that developing economies need annually to close the climate-finance gap. A key problem is that donors have not been stepping up to fund these entities. The US – the world's biggest economy and largest historical greenhouse-gas emitter – committed to providing a measly $17.5 million to the much-touted Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage (FRLD), agreed at COP28 in Dubai. At COP29 in Baku, the AF fell well short of its $300 million funding target, leaving it struggling to bankroll even the projects that are already in its pipeline. Now, even these modest contributions are set to dry up. President Donald Trump's administration has withdrawn the US from the Paris climate agreement, abandoned the FRLD and other funds, and dismantled the country's foreign-aid apparatus. While not all wealthy economies are following in America's footsteps, many – including Belgium, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom, as well as the European Union – are also tightening their purse strings. Together with the US, these donors accounted for 69 per cent of bilateral climate commitments to developing countries in 2021-22 and supplied 74 per cent of contributions to climate funds since 2003. In other words, raising climate finance – always a difficult task – is becoming a Herculean one, meaning that countries are going to have to figure out how to do more with less. The last thing the world needs is for this limited capital to be funnelled into a fragmented, inefficient system composed of dozens of narrow climate funds. Climate funds were created to address shortcomings of existing multilateral institutions like the World Bank. For example, they offer 'direct access' funding to national and regional entities, thereby promoting country ownership and helping to build institutional capacity. Moreover, their smaller scale and larger numbers were supposed to foster healthy competition and give recipient countries more options. But the fund landscape has become so crowded – with each entity possessing its own accreditation rules, approval processes, and compliance requirements – that recipients must navigate a bureaucratic maze to access any financing at all. All this red tape, which slows disbursements considerably, is especially burdensome for the most climate-vulnerable countries, such as small island developing states, whose institutional capacity is already stretched thin. It does not help that keeping all these funds running costs money. The overhead of the Special Climate Change Fund, for example, represented more than half of its project commitments in 2019-21. This is hardly the best use of limited climate finance. It is also worth noting that, while climate funds are generally supposed to raise 'new and additional' financing, this has seldom happened. Instead, they tend to draw from a fixed pool of public funds for sustainable development, which includes different climate-related projects and other critical priorities, such as health, education, and poverty reduction. Far from creating yet another climate fund, delegates at COP30 should focus on streamlining climate finance. A handful of funds with harmonised standards and processes would be far better equipped to deliver efficient and accessible funding – and ensure that as few dollars as possible are wasted. Experience suggests that such an effort might run up against considerable resistance. The CIFs were supposed to be a stopgap, to be wound down following the rise of the GCF. But in 2019, their governing committee scrapped the sunset clause, insisting – over the objections of experts and civil-society organisations – on their continued relevance. Ensuring that future efforts to build a more efficient climate-finance architecture are not similarly thwarted will require powerful actors to bring their influence to bear. This is the kind of climate leadership the world needs from Brazil. @Project Syndicate, 2025 Georgia Hammersley The writer is a research associate at the Lowy Institute's Indo-Pacific Development Centre
Arab News
26-04-2025
- Business
- Arab News
Pakistan finance chief urges faster payouts from climate loss and damage fund
KARACHI: Pakistan's Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb on Friday urged the international community to ensure faster and simpler disbursements from a new global fund set up to help vulnerable countries respond to climate-related losses. The Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage (FRLD), established at the COP27 climate summit in Egypt in 2022 before being officially operationalized by 198 countries, aims to help developing and least developed countries (LDCs) cope with both economic and non-economic impacts of climate change, such as extreme weather events and slow-onset crises like sea-level rise and droughts. Aurangzeb made the remarks while addressing a high-level dialogue over the issue, held on the sidelines of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund's Spring Meetings in Washington. 'Emphasizing that simplicity and agility should be the guiding principles, the finance minister urged the need for speedy disbursements under the fund, unlike the experience of LDCs and other vulnerable nations with existing climate finance mechanisms,' Pakistan's finance ministry said in a statement circulated after the dialogue. Aurangzeb also stressed the importance of 'the integrity of the whole process with adequate checks and balances,' according to the statement. He said Pakistan had been among the strongest proponents of the fund, warning that climate change represents an 'existential threat' to countries like his own. Pakistan has experienced increasingly erratic weather patterns in recent years, including heatwaves, droughts, cyclones and glacial melting. In 2022, record monsoon rains triggered floods that killed over 1,700 people, affecting 30 million more and causing economic losses exceeding $30 billion.
Business Recorder
25-04-2025
- Business
- Business Recorder
Existential threat facing Pakistan: Aurangzeb single out climate change
WASHINGTON: Federal Minister for Finance and Revenue Senator Muhammad Aurangzeb has singled out climate change as an existential threat facing Pakistan. He made this statement while addressing the High-Level Dialogue of the Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage (FRLD) on the sidelines of the 2025WBG/IMF Spring Meetings in Washington Friday. The Finance Minister said that Pakistan was the biggest proponent of the Loss & Damage Fund set up at COP28 through an agreement by 198 countries to assist particularly vulnerable developing countries in responding to economic and non-economic loss and damage associated with the adverse effects of climate change, including extreme weather events and slow onset events. During his address, Senator Muhammad Aurangzeb underlined the urgency of operationalizing the Fund and the importance of integrity of the whole process with adequate checks and balances. Emphasizing that simplicity and agility should be the guiding principles the Finance Minister urged the need for speedy disbursements under the Fund unlike the experience of LDCs and the most vulnerable countries with the existing climate funds. Copyright Business Recorder, 2025
