Context:

• United Nations Secretary-General tapped UN Special Envoy for Climate Action and philanthropist Michael R. Bloomberg to lead an initiative that will support a global mobilisation of private capital in response to the challenge of climate change. An announcement was made during the 73rd UN General Assembly session here.
• The Climate Finance Leadership Initiative will work to fulfill the private financing objectives included in the landmark 2015 Paris Climate Change Agreement, which reaffirmed the goal of mobilizing at least $100 billion per year by 2020 through a combination of public development finance and private foreign direct investment.

More details:

• Mobilising resources from the public and private sectors is critical to tackling the issue of climate change.
• Finance is critical to achieving the nationally determined goals laid out by governments under the Paris Agreement, and to enabling the enhanced ambition of cities, states and regions to contribute to such goals. The Climate Finance Leadership Initiative will draw members from top international financial firms and corporations to catalyse scaled-up investments in clean energy and climate resilience projects around the world, in both developed and emerging markets.
• The initiative will have a one-year term culminating in a UN Climate Summit to be held in September 2019. Founding members will be announced before the end of the year.
• The Climate Finance Leadership Initiative will work closely with the government of France in supporting its presidency of the G7 in 2019, and will provide a first report to G7 Finance Ministers by July 2019.

About the Initiative:

• Recognizing that the global response to climate change must include robust sub-national action, particularly in urban areas, coalitions of cities, banks, national governments and civil society organizations launched the Cities Climate Finance Leadership Alliance at the UN Secretary-General’s Climate Summit on 23 September 2014.
• The Cities Climate Finance Leadership Alliance’s mission is to catalyse and accelerate additional capital flows to cities, maximize investment in low-carbon and climate-resilient infrastructure, and close the investment gap in urban areas over the next fifteen years.
• The Alliance is a coalition of thirty six leading institutions that are committed to mobilize finance for low-emission and climate-resilient infrastructure, in particular for the benefit of poor and vulnerable communities in cities. Alliance members commit to reinforce and expand their existing programs to support city leaders and city institutions, as well as to share information, coordinate activities, and seek synergies among their individual efforts.

Source:IE