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Mohieldin sets three priorities to empower developing economies in climate crisis, SDGs achievement
Dr. Mahmoud Mohieldin, United Nations Special Envoy for Financing the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda, UN Climate Change High-Level Champion for Egypt, has set three priorities to empower developing economies in climate crisis and help them achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs); Finance, Technology Transfers and Capacity Building.
This came in the sixth chapter titled “Three priorities to empower developing economies in the climate crisis” written by Mohieldin as part of “Parliamentarians Guide to Climate Change” report by the University of Exeter meant to serve as a guide for Parliamentarians’ in the UK and beyond aiming to tackle climate change.
In his contribution, Dr. Mohieldin shed light on the current gaps for climate finance, with a focus on gaps in adaptation as well as loss and damage, asserting the inefficient, insufficient and unfair landscape of climate finance.
Mohieldin wrote that the first pillar is finance which is the backbone of any successful effort on development and climate goals. Many developing countries are incapable of adequately providing and mobilizing finance for development purposes without incurring even more debilitating and expensive debts that take too long to be disbursed, and further cripple the fiscal capacities of the already highly burdened treasuries of Global South countries.
To fix the finance problem, the three most salient facets of the current landscape of climate and development finance need to be addressed: inefficiency, insufficiency and unfairness. This means less reliance on debt and more on investments.
“Furthermore, we need to make debt, when needed, cheaper. Concessional finance must become more widely available and, crucially, much quicker. This would all need to feed into finance being orders of magnitude higher than it is today,” he added.
According to the Independent High-Level Expert Group, Emerging Markets and Developing Economies bar China need $5.4 trillion a year to 2030 to achieve the SDGs, including $2.4 trillion a year for climate action. Current figures for SDG finance comprise a mere fraction of this goal. In addition to that, finance flows are lopsided towards mitigation, ignoring the increasingly pressing need to finance climate adaptation. About 80% of multilateral climate finance goes towards mitigation but – with global warming now very likely to exceed 1.5 °C – Global South nations need to fund adaptation.
Secondly, and coupled with finance, is the need for technology transfers. The current trend of increasing fragmentation and protectionism is blocking many essential climate-related technologies from becoming mainstream and is further leaving Global South countries behind in the adoption of necessary climate technologies for mitigation and adaptation. For example, while solar photovoltaic (PV) costs have dropped by upwards of 90% since 2012, thanks to extensive Research and Development and production at scale, storage costs still remain high across the globe. And while drastic cost reductions in battery production have been achieved, trade protectionism is keeping these technologies from making their way to many places in the world.
“Opening the space for technology transfers, specifically with climate related technologies, is for our common good. Parallel to that, we need to streamline the process of matchmaking demand and supply for climate-related projects, an effort currently taking place on both the regional and local levels through the Regional Platforms for Climate Projects and, for example, the National Initiative for Smart Green Projects, which provides a deep dive in a specific country case,” he added.
Thirdly, developing economies require capacity building for design of policies, development of projects and effectively implementing them. At the core of such need is the requirement for more open and granular data. Data is imperative because the current lack of adequate data is both hindering better finance flows and causing inefficiencies in resource allocations.
Developing economies and emerging markets still significantly lag behind advanced economies in data collection and statistical capacity. The provision of adequate technical assistance and capacity building will help bridge this gap, and consequently make way for better data and information ecosystems on climate and development.
The newly launched and continuously developing Global Capacity Building Coalition aims to tackle this disparity and enhance effective implementation developing economies. The world cannot approach climate change or sustainability as isolated entities, as the nature of these issues is global and not bound by geographical borders.
“As we approach the summit of the future and start the road to Spain towards the Fourth Finance for Development forum in June 2025, we must continuously remind ourselves that cooperation is not a luxury, but a must, if we are to enact the changes that would put us on the right track. These changes can happen with the right leadership,” he added.
In the UK, the Parliament has just been elected with many new faces, as well as old ones that have gained the trust of the general public, and therefore new opportunities arise. “We need visionary leaders at local, national and international level. We need to realize we are in a crisis, and that leaders can make the needed change. We can choose to pursue effective policies – or we can continue to rely on wishful thinking. I join the hope that the Members of Parliament will use every power they have, as representatives of the public, to push for change in the right direction,” he concluded the chapter.
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