Baku (Azerbaijan), November 14, 2024 - In the midst of flood emergencies affecting different regions of Colombia, the Minister of Environment and President of the COP16 biodiversity COP16, Susana Muhamad, made a strong call on the magnitude of the costs triggered by climate disasters and the urgent need to reform the global financial system to support developing countries.
"The first six months of 2024 have cost $41 billion in climate-related losses, and this is with a global rise of just 1.1 degrees Celsius. We are facing the first year of 1.5 degrees, and the cost of inaction will increase exponentially if we do not step up mitigation and adaptation actions", Muhamad told the 6th Ministerial Dialogue on Climate Finance, held on the sidelines of COP29 on climate change in Baku.
The Colombian Minister of Environment and president of the COP16 on biodiversity, Susana Muhamad on behalf of the Colombian government, pointed out that the climate crisis in 2024 has generated serious floods in Colombia, leaving more than 232.000 people affected and millions of dollars in losses, therefore it is necessary to consolidate a new global pact on climate finance.
With an appeal to the international community, he stressed the need to establish a new quantified and fair financing framework, appropriate to the climate reality. This objective must recognize that the lower the investment in mitigation, the greater the need to allocate resources to compensate for losses and damages and revealed that access to capital for the countries most affected by the climate crisis is dramatic
"Our access to capital costs ten times more than that of any developed country due to the debt crisis. This lack of access limits investment in a just transition," she explained, highlighting how risk assessments increase financial costs and limit the development of sustainability projects in developing countries, the most vulnerable to climate change, such as Colombia.
Muhamad called for an urgent reform of the financial system in the face of the debt crisis and the urgency of mitigating the impacts of climate change, which has worsened in countries like Colombia, and stressed that with an increase of 1.5°C in the earth's temperature this year and without decisive action, the situation will worsen.
The proposal of the new financial plan based on the climate decalogue of the president, Gustavo Petro, proposes, among other things, to establish a 10-year debt relief pact and greater public investment to guarantee a just transition in developing countries, the most affected by the natural disasters caused by the triple crisis.
The proposal of the new financial plan
The minister proposed five key points to transform climate finance in an equitable way:
- A ten-year debt relief pact to enable developing countries to invest in the climate transition.
- Changes in the policies of Multilateral Development Banks (NDBs) to facilitate access to resources.
- Implementation of global taxes that mobilize private capital and convert it into public finance.
- Direct distribution of funds to national fiscal spaces instead of development agencies that, according to Muhamad, complicate transparency.
- Transparency and a dramatic increase in public investment as a basis for leveraging private investment in climate action.
Finally, Minister Muhamad urged the global community to rethink its financial policies in favor of fair and effective climate finance. "It is time for a new equitable and fair financing target to address this climate crisis. We can only talk about climate justice if we multiply public investment and facilitate access to capital for countries at risk, if we do not reverse the current trajectory, the world is heading towards a temperature increase of up to 3 degrees Celsius, which will bring devastating economic and social costs for the entire planet”, she concluded.
While the current commitment to climate finance, which ends in 2025, is 100 billion dollars a year, in the first six months of 2024 alone, losses due to extreme weather amounted to 41 billion dollars. In view of this insufficiency, the country supports the G77 proposal to raise this commitment to 1.3 trillion dollars a year.