COP27 in Sharm El-Sheikh has come to an end, and what has been achieved? To list a few tangible results:
- a breakthrough “Loss and Damages“ Fund for most vulnerable countries
- further commitments to 1.5-degree goal
- new pledges totaling more than USD 230 million were made to the Adaptation Fund
- endorsement of Sharm-El-Sheikh Adaptation Agenda
- operationalization of National Adaptation Plans and locally led principles.
Scale for Resilience was strongly represented in Egypt by Sabrina Nagel and Christoph Jungfleisch from YAPU Solutions, Andrea Castellanos (CIAT) as well as Luca Torre (GAWA Capital). They all had an extraordinary time to talk with existing partners and meet new ones. The focus was on on promoting the work of Scale for Resilience, as well as highlighting the YAPU platform as one of the only proven and ready-to scale solutions to provide resilience finance to climate changes’ most vulnerable populations. While the heavy topics of lacking transparency and standards, wrong incentivization, and insufficient collaboration between the public and private sector, hung prevalent in the air, it was reassuring to meet so many other motivated people promoting climate action. COP27 was the first time that adaptation and resilience were at the center of the attention with the UNFCCC COP Resilience Hub being “the place to be.” Scale for Resilience was frequently cited, and we are grateful for this extra boost in motivation! COP27 was a rich, yet exhausting experience, but we left Sharm El-Sheikh with new energy to promote Resilience Finance for the most vulnerable!
Watch short video updates from Sabrina at COP:
Implementation Lab: Resilience Financing Roundtable
On November 9, we co-organized the “Financing Resilience” Implementation Lab roundtable session. The event brought together high-level decision makers from private and public investors, as well as governments to focus on two of the key breakthroughs advocated by the UN Climate Change High-Level Champions to catalyze adaptation and resilience financing globally:
- Private sector integrates physical climate risks into investment decisions and continues to innovate mechanisms for financing Adaptation and Resilience to enable the mobilization of the USD 140 to USD 300 billion by 2030 that will be needed across both public and private sources.
- Public finance actors increase provision of climate finance and allocate 50% of climate funds to adaptation and resilience
The session directly focused on the mission of Scale for Resilience. The key take-aways were that the public and private sectors must work together with the private sector furthering innovative financial mechanisms for adaption and resilience, while integrating physical climate risk into investment decisions. Investors must look beyond individual portfolio risks and see systemic risks and thus invest in infrastructure to increase adaptive capacities. YAPU’s approach of digital resilience finance for the most vulnerable was one of the solutions presented and very well received by the 150 participants.
Watch the full session recording here.
Read the Sharm El-Sheikh Adaptation Agenda Technical Report here.
Resilience Hub Workshop: How to finance resilience for smallholder farmers at scale?
On Thursday of week one of COP27, we hosted our first workshop at the COP Resilience Hub on “How to finance resilience for smallholder farmers at scale?” moderated by Christoph Jungfleisch. The interactive session featured speakers from The GEF (Jason Spensley), BNP Paribas (Claudia Belli), ResponsAbility (Mauricio Benitez), GAWA Capital (Luca Torre), and the Climate Policy Initiative (Daniela Chiriac). The first the group brainstormed barriers to scaling resilience finance for smallholders and then listed existing solutions and discussed. Rather quickly, the discussion focused around “Who should pay?” and after a brainstorming with the audience, it was agreed that blended finance could be a key tool to catalyze resilience financing in developing countries.
Session Highlights:
Watch the full session recording here.
Resilience Hub Workshop: How to improve productive realities at scale?
To close off week one of COP27, Sabrina moderated a panel on “How to improve productive realities at scale?” at the COP Resilience Hub. The speakers included Irwin Boutboul from Startups for Sustainable Development (Google), David Nicholson (Mercy Corps), Marie Veyrier (Global Shea Alliance), Alan Elizondo (FIRA), Andrea Castellanos (CIAT/CGIAR), and Christoph from YAPU. Digital solutions were discussed at length as well as the challenges of data collection on smallholder farmers to be able to implement artificial intelligence and scalable solutions. It was highlighted that there must be more collaboration and platforms to connect the dots of all institutions working in this space.
Session Highlights:
Watch the full session recording here.
In conclusion, it was a great experience for Scale for Resilience to be co-lead of the “Food&Agriculture” -Theme for the Resilience Hub at COP27 and we are looking forward to furthering our engagement in the dialogue of Resilience Finance for the most vulnerable.
