A total of nine countries under the Nature, People and Climate Investment platform of the Climate Investment Funds (CIF) will benefit from its $350 million in financing support for nature-based solutions to climate change.
Among the benefitting countries are the Dominican Republic, Egypt, Fiji, Kenya, and the Zambezi River Basin Region, comprising Zambia, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia and Tanzania. They were announced during the global climate summit (COP27) taking place in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt.
The Nature, People and Climate program deploys nature-based solutions that acknowledge linkages among land use, climate-change mitigation and adaptation, and the improvement of the sources of livelihoods of rural communities and Indigenous people.
Additionally, it covers sustainable agriculture, food supply, forests, resilient coastal systems and efforts to empower indigenous people and local communities.
The participating countries are expected to develop investment plans in collaboration with a number of partner multilateral development banks as a next step, after which the platform also works with multilateral development banks to de-risk and scale investment based on a systems-level rather than a project-level approach.
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Speaking about the development, the Funds’ CEO, Mafalda Duarte said that fifty-five developing countries applied to participate in the program over the past few months, underscoring the urgent demand for climate finance.
“I extend our gratitude to Italy, the United Kingdom and Sweden for the incredible partnership. Congratulations to these countries. We cannot wait to get going and this is only the beginning. We will also be supporting Ethiopia, Rwanda, Namibia and Brazil for investment plan preparations, in anticipation of receiving further contributions,” Duarte said.
Also speaking, Italy’s Special Envoy for Climate Change, Ambassador Alessandro Modiano, said: “Humanity is facing a dual threat: climate change and biodiversity loss. The two are a dire consequence of human activity and economic progress at the expense of nature,” he said.
Egypt’s Minister of International Cooperation Rania Al-Mashat thanked Climate Investment Funds on behalf of her country, saying “we have a lineup of priority projects on adaptation and mitigation. These funds will help us implement these plans,”.
According to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), annual nature investments from G20 nations alone need to increase by an additional $165 billion per year, an increase of 140 per cent from existing levels, to realize biodiversity, land restoration and climate targets by 2050.
Story was adapted from AFDB.
