Brazil President Lula da Silva and the COP28 Presidency also announced a two-year partnership to mobilise new resources and political support for nature on the road to COP30 in Belem….reports Asian Lite News
During the World Climate Action Summit, the COP28 Presidency and its partners on Sunday presented a series of new and ambitious initiatives with an initial $1.7 billion of committed finance to simultaneously meet climate and biodiversity goals.
Brazil President Lula da Silva and the COP28 Presidency also announced a two-year partnership to mobilise new resources and political support for nature on the road to COP30 in Belem.
“Ensuring that nature in its total and most holistic form is recognised, supported, and funded as a prerequisite to climate action has been a priority for the COP28 Presidency,” said Razan Khalifa Al Mubarak, the UN Climate Change High-Level Champion for COP28.
“This remarkable political leadership coupled with support and finance from non-state actors is a testament to the fundamental role of nature not just for this COP but for all future COPs to come.”
In the session, heads of state and government unveiled national and regional investment plans and partnerships focused on nature-climate action to deliver on the Paris Agreement and the recently adopted Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework.
Al Mubarak announced that the United Arab Emirates (UAE) would contribute $100 million of new finance for nature-climate projects, with an initial $30 million investment in Ghanaian government’s ‘Resilient Ghana’ plan.
‘Resilient Ghana’ was launched by Ghanaian President Nana Akufo-Addo with an additional $80 million of support from Canada, Singapore, the US and other private sector aligned initiatives such as the LEAF Coalition, supplementing the UAE’s $30 million.
Siaosi ‘Ofakivahafolau Sovaleni, the Prime Minister of Tonga, announced $100million of finance for Pacific Small Island Developing States (P-SIDS) from the Bezos Earth Fund for the ‘Unlocking Blue Pacific Prosperity Plan’ to protect 30 per cent of the countries’ waters and exclusive economic zones by 2030 — representing an area larger than the surface of the moon.
A group of philanthropies, including Bloomberg Philanthropies, Builders Vision and Oceankind, announced $250 million of new finance under the Ocean Resilience Climate Alliance (ORCA), targeting protection for vulnerable marine areas, ocean-based mitigation efforts, and research on climate impacts.
President Emmanuel Macron of France confirmed funding for three forest finance packages, including $100 million for Papua New Guinea, and $50 million for Congo, to drive private finance of conservation and local development through verifiable carbon credit transactions.
Indonesian President Joko Widodo and Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store highlighted a $100 million partnership in support of Indonesia’s pioneering FOLU Net Sink 2030 plan.
The Asian Development Bank, along with the OPEC Fund, Saudi Arabia, AFD, France, and the ASEAN Catalytic Green Finance Facility at the Green Climate Fund, announced the Nature Finance Hub, a new initiative committing to mobilise $1 billion from development partners, with the intention of mobilising a further $2 billion in additional private finance capital by 2030 into nature-focused climate projects.
These nature-climate plans also drive progress on previous commitments, including COP26’s Glasgow Leaders’ Declaration, which saw 145 countries agree to halt and reverse forest loss and land degradation by 2030, as well as the landmark Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework agreed last December, which saw 196 countries agree on a common framework to halt total nature loss by 2030.
Addressing nature-loss can save $104 billion in adaptation costs and has the potential to provide upwards of 30 percent of the CO2 mitigation action needed by 2030.
Additionally, as around 50 percent of global GDP is directly or indirectly dependent on nature and other ecosystem services, the conservation and restoration of natural ecosystems supports economic prosperity, with the potential to create nearly 395 billion more jobs and to protect one billion people whose livelihoods are directly dependent on nature.
$777B For Diseases
Global donors at the 2023 Reaching the Last Mile Forum have pledged a collective more than AED2.6 billion (US$777.2 million) to help control, eliminate, and eradicate neglected tropical diseases (NTDs), to accelerate progress towards achieving the goals outlined in the World Health Organisation’s 2030 roadmap on NTDs.
Uniting efforts with NTD-endemic countries, donors answered the urgent call to step up the fight against NTDs in the face of climate change, and to work together to improve the lives of the 1.6 billion people worldwide affected by these devastating yet preventable diseases.
The pledging event was hosted by Reaching the Last Mile (RLM), the global health initiative driven by the philanthropy of President His Highness Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, in partnership with the Bill Melinda Gates Foundation. The forum took place on the first ever Health Day during the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP28).
H.H. Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Minister of Foreign Affairs, was joined by world leaders including Samia Suluhu Hassan, President of Tanzania; and Dr. Austin Demby, Minister of Health and Sanitation for Sierra Leone, in a demonstration of endemic country leadership against NTDs.
Bill Gates, Co-Chair of the Bill Melinda Gates Foundation, and H.H. Sheikh Theyab bin Mohamed Al Nahyan, Chairman of the Office of Development and Martyrs Families Affairs at the Presidential Court, which oversees Reaching the Last Mile, were also in attendance, alongside ministers and global health leaders.
Reaching the Last Mile joined with the Gates Foundation and global partners to announce a milestone expansion of the Reaching the Last Mile Fund (RLMF) from more than AED367 million to more than AED1.8 billion (US$100 million to US$500 million). The expansion will increase the reach of the fund from seven countries to 39 across Africa and Yemen, with the ambitious goal of eliminating two NTDs, lymphatic filariasis and onchocerciasis (river blindness), from the continent of Africa.
The funding builds on the pioneering success of the RLMF, which launched in 2017 as a 10-year, multi-donor fund, to establish a model for eliminating the two diseases in sub-Saharan Africa.
