Financing Adaptation in the Era of Overshoot - Solutions Dialogues, Climate Summit 2026

Thank you.

Thank you so much. And now I would like to turn to His Excellency Sudhakar Dalai, Vice Minister of Economic Relations of the Ministry of External Affairs of India. Over to you.

Thank you very much, Madam Chairperson, for giving me the floor. Thank you very much, UN Climate Action Team, for hosting Situation Dialogue on this important theme and for the thoughtful opening remarks by the colleague from UNEP, WMO, and UNCAT, and of course, by the distinguished moderator. Adaptation is a priority for developing countries that have contributed the least to global warming and face its serious consequences. It is difficult for us to appreciate the terminology of an era of overshoot which does not seem to command full scientific consensus. Overshoot scenario envisages temporarily exceeding 1.5 degrees Celsius level. They rely on carbon dioxide removal at a scale dwarfing that remaining carbon budget, with 50 to 90% of removals relying on technologies not proven at scale, with serious consequences for food security and livelihoods in the global south. To respond to some of the questions raised by the distinguished moderator as regard adaptation and resilience building, I would like to highlight or underscore three particular dimensions. The first, early warning systems must be treated as essential public infrastructure, a point made by several speakers who just intervened. India's experience shows that end-to-end systems save lives, save communities. Financing must cover the full chain from risk knowledge and observation to dissemination, preparedness, and last-mile action, including operations, maintenance, technology, and institutional capacity. National ownership should not shift the financing burden to developing countries. Second, adaptation planning and action must remain country-driven, nationally determined, inclusive, and rooted in science and traditional knowledge. Priorities identified through NDCs adaptation communications and national adaptation plans must reflect local realities free from prescriptive requirements or a standardized singular approach. Their implementation requires adequate support. We need enhanced readiness and project preparation assistance, streamline access to multilateral climate funds and lower transaction costs. Third, adaptation finance must improve in quantity and quality. Developing countries will require over US$350 billion annually by 2035 against current international flows of around US$26 billion. Closing this gap requires predictable and scaled up public finance. In accordance with Article 7 and 9 of the Paris Agreement, developed countries must provide grants and concessional resources that do not create additional debt burdens. Insurances, guarantees, resilience, green bonds and other instruments may complement but cannot substitute public finance. India is mainstreaming adaptation through national and state level planning, predominantly from domestic resources. Proven initiatives in climate resilient agriculture, water management, and ecosystem restoration remain constrained by limited finance, technology, and capacity. Adaptation is not an optional add-on, but an essential investment. Success must be judged by real improvements in the resilience of communities, ecosystem, and economies. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you so much. And now I would like to call on Her Excellency, Ana Liza Rebelo Huerta, the Undersecretary for Finance, Information systems, climate change, and administration in the Department of Environment and Natural Resources for the Republic of Philippines. Over to you. Thank you.

Chair, excellencies, distinguished delegates, partners, and colleagues. In the Philippines, the economic cost of inaction across eight sectors identified in our national adaptation plan is estimated at $11 billion annually, underscoring the urgency of scaling up adaptation finance. The Philippines recently formalized its membership in the Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure as its 71st member and the second Southeast Asian nation to join, strengthening our commitment to international cooperation on infrastructure resilience. Knowing what is coming and being able to act before it arrives is among the most powerful and cost-effective investments governments can make. Yet, financing for early warning systems remains fragmented, with significant gaps with establishing systems and sustaining their operations, maintenance, and use. We share the same view that we must move beyond treating early warning systems as short-term development projects and recognize them as critical, permanent public infrastructure. This requires multi-year and predictable financing that recognizes the value of avoided losses, including lives protected, infrastructure safeguarded, and development gains preserved. The Philippines is institutionalizing this approach through the program Convergence Budgeting Risk Resiliency Program, which aligns investment across government in hazard monitoring, forecasting, risk assessment, and preparedness. Through climate change expenditure tagging, these priorities are also integrated into regular agency planning and budgets, helping track and sustain public investment in climate resilience. A warning only saves lives when people have the means to act. We therefore need prearranged and trigger-based financing that can be activated when risk reach defined thresholds, alongside sustained investment in local risk information, warning dissemination, and community preparedness. In the Philippines, investment portfolios for risk resilience and local climate change Action plans help to connect identified risks and priority actions with local disaster risk reduction financing and other public resources. That creates a clearer pathway from risk identification to action planning to the financing that is available to the protective action that is taken, including pre-emptive evacuation and protection of critical facilities and vulnerable communities. The sustainability of an early warning system depends not only on installing equipment but on financing operations and maintenance, data collection, technical personnel, system upgrades, and continuous training. These recurring requirements must be built into financing from the outset with a clear pathway towards domestic budget ownership. International finance can help make this transition possible through concessional finance, grant-based project preparation, technology transfer and capacity building. Support should help countries establish systems that governments can ultimately finance and sustain themselves, rather than creating new cycles of project dependence. Our goal should be to move from isolated projects to permanent, nationally owned systems of resilience. With predictable international support aligned with domestic planning and budgeting, we can ensure that early warnings are not only issued, but translated into timely action that protects lives, livelihoods, and development gains. Thank you.

Thank you so much. I'd now like to pass the floor to Rachel Kyte, the United Kingdom Special Representative for Climate. Thank you.

Madam, I'm pleased to be here today for this important conversation. The first conversation we've had of this kind officially in an overshoot world. May it be short and shallow. I think the question now is not only how to reach our temperature target from the Paris Agreement, but how to do it while building resilient societies. That demands a different response from all of us. We have to stop treating resilience as if it is the consolation prize for missing our mitigation target and start treating it as the precondition for reaching it at all. Others have noted the compound nature of the crises we now live in. This is eroding the fiscal capacity a country needs to finance its own progress. A government spending on flood recovery is a government with less room to spend on its energy infrastructure. Therefore, we must, first, implement specific action in the current financial architecture that will allow countries the headroom to invest in, for example, early warning, which should be regarded as a critical societal infrastructure, a security infrastructure, as my colleague from the WMO has already noted. Secondly, early warning systems, preparedness and participatory action, prearranged finance and national planning should operate as part of a single system, rather than separate institutions and funding streams. We will have to prioritise support financially to focus on LDCs, SIDS and fragile and conflict-affected states, embedding early warning action within national institutions, plans and budgets through locally led and people-centred approaches. Funding partners, like the United Kingdom, should support a transition from service delivery to system support, helping countries finance and sustain their own early warning capability over the long term. Funding models will need to recognise that operations, maintenance, workforce capability and institutional co-ordination are as important as the technology and the infrastructure. Thirdly, as we move along the continuum, we need to recognise that the risk pools that we have for prearranged finance and for catastrophe risk are too small in a world where we are in constant crisis. We will need to revisit together how we can make sure that those pools are financed at a higher level and extend their coverage. We are encouraged at some of the innovation that is happening in the industry and with not-for-profit organisations, looking at perhaps new sustainable business models for reinsurance, and we would encourage that to happen more quickly. We're looking carefully at how we can use our G20 to advance this agenda. So, let's amend the architecture, scale what's working and innovate in the areas where we have yet still more to do. Thank you.

Thank you so much for sharing those. Thank you. I'd like to remind everyone as we go forward just to keep comments brief. Rachel did that wonderfully. Let's keep things brief so that we can hear from everyone. I would like to now pass to Benoit Ferraco, the climate envoy from France. Over to you. Thank you.

Can you hear me? Yeah. Sorry for that. I will try to be super short because I really agree with a lot of elements that have been presented in this conversation right now. I just want to say and to express France's deep solidarity with all those who are facing terrible impact of climate change this year and also to those who are bracing for impacts of this super El Nino year. And also to recognize the leadership of the UNSG team on this topic because it took a while, but people are finally recognizing that early warning system is not something that optional, it's almost a human right. Everyone in this planet in this decade that will be also a decade for adaptation and resilience as a right. to be alerted in advance of the occurrence of any climate events that is going to hit him. It's a collective duty and the good news on this element is that all technologies are available. We know how to do that and we have results as demonstrated by UNEP and WMO. This is a solution dialogue and we have the solution, but we are still lagging behind, and I hope that we will use COP31 and COP32 to close the gap. It's at reach, definitely. It's not billions of dollars, it's million of euros to save millions of lives on this planet in the coming months. It's as simple as that, and it's what the French-led CRUSE initiative, launched in the Paris Agreement, that is working with a lot of partners in this room, has been a top priority for the G7 presidency of France this year. And we are hoping, because we have made pledges, including with some friends and colleagues in this room, that by the end of the year, we will be able to collect the 100, 150 million missing just to bring universal coverage in SIDS and LDCs. It's something that is at reach not only for traditional donors, but also for all the climate community. We call up, or we call on non-traditional donor, but also to the private sector to invest in that. It brings money, it brings growth to your economy. And in France, we developed it. It make a big difference to help us to face the difficult summer we faced with forest fire and everything. Once again, it's a human right. Let's deliver on this and let's close this gap by 2027. It's a collective duty and would be a very strong signal of hope for COP31. I thank you.

Thank you so much and for that call to action by all of us. Next, I would like to call on Ms. Mafalda Duarte, Executive Director of the Green Climate Fund. Over to you. Thank you. Okay.

The first task is to know if I'm clicking the right button. Yes, I am. Thank you very much, Ellen. And let me start by thanking Selwyn and the UNSG Climate Action Team and UN Secretary General, because he has been a big, big champion of this agenda, untirable champion of this agenda, even at times when others might think that there are other priorities to consider. I was asked to speak on early warning systems. As you might know, the Green Climate Fund is a large investor of adaptation. And why is the Green Climate Fund a large investor of adaptation? Because there was a determination at the board that at least half of our resources would be invested in adaptation. So these type of decisions make a difference. When a board of a financial institution determines that 50% of its resources should be devoted to adaptation, that is where the resources go. The board also determined that LDCs in Africa would be prioritized. And so because of that, our resilience portfolio, more than 75% actually goes to these geographies. So it does make a difference. The other thing as well is that it is very clear, there's clarity, enough clarity that we have to unlock private sector investments also in adaptation. And our portfolio demonstrates as well that that's possible. One third of the portfolio is, of our private sector portfolio, direct private sector portfolio, is to support adaptation investments. So we took, we responded to the UNSG call on early warning for all. And by doing so, we have now become a very large financier of early warning systems globally. We have $2.2 billion committed, which represents a third of global investments in this area. A lot of it is still to be seen, the results of this. Just last year, we approved A large advancing early warnings for all program, 220 million partnership to support seven highly climate-vulnerable countries. Some of the projects are already demonstrating results in Uganda in terms of agriculture and food security, in Guatemala as well, in Lao PDR in terms of the health sector because it benefits several sectors of the economy. as we know, and in others, in terms of the water sector as well, and glacier lake outburst risks, which, as we know, are increasing significantly and putting millions and millions at risk. Taking the provocation of Salwyn in the beginning, let me say a couple of things. I fully support the remarks of the Minister of Rwanda It is really important to provide support across the full value chain. But what that means is that we also need to bring different institutions together and form different types of partnerships than what we have seen in the past, because different institutions operate and have a comparative advantage across different parts of this value chain. So that's very much what we are looking forward and are encouraging our partners and look forward to working with them on this. The other very important thing that was mentioned by several of the speakers is really to explore sustainability. What are the sustainable financing models? Because this can only work if it is sustained, if there is predictability, if there is maintenance. So that is, again, one dimension that we are very focused on and looking forward to working with many partners here in this room that we are working with other partners to make sure that these investments, which are quite significant, as you can see, really bear the results, the important results, and save the millions of lives that they are expected to, and the physical infrastructure as well. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. And I'd now like to turn to our last speaker for this segment, Mr. Jamie Ferguson, Global Director for Climate at the World Bank. Thank you. Over to you. Just tap once. If you tap it once and it's got a red light, it's on.

Wonderful. Thank you, Helen. Thank you, Selwyn. Excellencies, colleagues, friends. 4.5 billion people are expected to be impacted by a major climate event within their lifetime. 1.5 billion of those are highly vulnerable due to a lack of job, access to electricity, water or social protection. While we must ramp up our collective investment in this space, we should recognize that the limitations in our metrics for this work risk us hitting targets and missing the point. We must focus on creating resilient infrastructure, jobs, and communities. Over the last six years, the World Bank Group has invested $80 billion in development finance with adaptation co-benefits. More importantly, our current portfolio promises to enhance the resilience of 465 million people. There is still work to be done. Early warning systems lack universal coverage. A recent World Bank study shows that while in developed countries over 60 to 80% of the population receive early warnings, the coverage is notably lower in Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, parts of Central Asia, Middle East and North Africa. The World Bank Group approach on early warning systems emphasizes six priorities. One, building institutional capacity, prioritizing the provision of technical, managerial, and financial support to national meteorological and hydrological services alongside capital investments in equipment. Number two, user-centric service delivery, so that information reaches the right people in time to act. We promote dialogue between national weather offices and the sectors they serve, farmers, health, health ministries, energy utilities, transport agencies, so that the products are tailored and actionable. Number three, multi-sectoral and regional integration, including sharing of observational data, harmonization of forecasting standards, and a pool of technical expertise, particularly in Africa, South Asia, and Central Asia. Linkage to proactive preparatory financing. We have significantly ramped up our conditional social protection investments to break the cycle of recovery and replacement in favor of preparation, both at the community level and at the national level. Partnership. We are grateful to collaboration and partnership on many of the programs we work on with WMO, UNDRR, ITU, IFRC, and others. And finally, leveraging the private sector. Examples include our Hydromet program, the Africa Regional Hydromet program, implemented in partnership that has invested approximately 600 million over eight years to modernize Hydromet equipment and early warning systems across 15 African countries. Also in Africa, our drive index insurance product monitors pasture conditions through satellite technology. When pasture falls below a certain level, an insurance payout is triggered automatically and paid directly to pastoralists through mobile money systems. The payout allows pastoralists to buy water, fodder, and medicine to keep the breeding stock alive during a severe drought, rather than replacing lost animals. And of course, our broader National Crisis Response Toolkit, where 13 countries have already used the crisis toolkit to respond to crises, of which four have used multiple tools, receiving a total of 1.5 billion in the last year. Thank you very much.

Thank you so much, and to all who have shared in this first session on early warning systems. I think there was a very clear call across the room that early warning systems are not a luxury. These are an absolute necessity and one of the most cost-effective investments in terms of protecting lives. We heard that the science and technology, the early warning systems, observatory systems, these have made great progress. We've made leaps and bounds of progress. The challenge now is really on the finance. And moving from finance that is project-based development finance to truly lasting infrastructure investments, ones that can be sustaining over time, nationally owned, finance through a number of mechanisms, international finance as well, but it's not a project. It is a long term infrastructure investment and both across all of the elements that are needed from the technologies, the systems, the training, operating and maintenance, the workforce, etc. We also heard a number of the solutions that are starting to come forward and the finance that is coming forward and how we can also scale that up. There'll be more to be done. For the next session, we're going to focus on how to move from adaptation planning to action and the finance that is needed to support it. Most of the countries represented here already have done the analytic work. They have national adaptation plans in place, priorities identified, needs costed. So we know that, but why does it stall then? This is because the next step is often the hardest one, to move to something that a funder can actually finance. This takes feasibility work, a clear owner within government, a credible way of paying for it over time, and it's where many adaptation investments stall. So this session is really focused on the solutions of what can help us get past that point in governments and amongst funders as we move forward. To set the scene for this discussion, I'd like to invite Mr. Marcos Neto, Assistant Secretary General, Assistant Administrator and Director of the Bureau for Policy and Program Support at the United Nations Development Program to set the scene. Over to you.

Thank you, Chair, and to my brother, Serwene, and excellencies, it's amazing to be here to have this conversation. Now, we do meet in a critical junction. Martin has already framed us in terms of the overshoot. And I think it is pretty clear that we don't need more planning. One of the greatest things about COP30 in Berlin last year is the third generation of NDCs are much better. To give an idea, 80% of the NDCs submitted by developing countries have a cost to it, never before. 90% much improved elements of adaptation, and 80% of the NAPs, the National Adaptation Plans, are now linked to the NDCs. So for any government here, you know, you plan out. The question is, how do we move from the plan to the implementation? Now, we at the United Nations Development Programme have been doing this as much as we can with all of you. governance years with partners like the Adaptation Fund, the Green Climate Fund, the GEF, and many MDBs. But I think we are in a moment that we need to triple down on implementation. Now, as COP30 put it out there, the year of implementation, Turkey, incoming COP31 presidency is pretty much clear, it is the COP of implementation, I'll get to that in a moment. Now, what is our experiences as one of the largest implementer of climate programs in the world tell us? Four things. One, first, strengthening systemic connection between adaptation planning and development finance. All of those plans that I've mentioned to you need to become pipelines. investable elements. But also, let's be realistic. In adaptation, not every aspect of NAPS or any decision adaptation will create a cash flow for private sector. So we do need to understand that. So we're realistic in what we expect from the private sector and what we don't and how we use small public finance to cover what private sector cannot cover, different than on mitigation and renewables, which is easier to see a cash flow return. In Armenia, through our climate promise, UNDP support local governments to mainstreaming national adaptation policy at the local level, integrate them with community four years development plans and community budgets. Now, second, supporting more coordinating programmatic approaches for accessing funds. When country seeks international public or private finance for adaptation, they encounter a complicated ecosystem. over varied requirements, complex application processes, and prolonged timelines. The administrative burden can result in isolating one-off projects. What is needed are more streamlined and coordinated processes that support programmatic approaches. In that sense, I must congratulate the vertical funds, the green funds, that under the leadership of the G20, the Brazilian presidents have come together to simplify and to use each other's processes, more needs to be done. But it's a lot of progress going on. In Ethiopia, the G7 Adaptation Accelerator and Hub, supported by Italy, is feeding country priorities directly into emerging national climate financing strategies and facilitating the development of a much stakeholder and co-create pipeline development coordination process. And we also have, again, coming out of the Brazilian presidency, G20, the country platforms, which we at UNDP are part of the hub that is setting them up around the world. Third, accelerating establishment of investment-ready pipelines. Recognizing pipelines as one of the critical bottlenecks to accessing finance at scale. Many new initiatives are targeting this gap, including strategic presidency's initiative, the NAP Implementation Alliance led by Brazil, Germany, and Italy, and the Climate Implementation Bridge that has been presented yesterday as part of the Climate Action of the incoming COP presidency 31, Turkey. And we at UNDP are extremely proud to have been named by Turkey as the delivering mechanism, as the UN climate promise delivery mechanism for the climate implementation bridge. Those are incredibly important. And we need to come together to really put in place those pipelines that are necessary. Finally, unlocking the private capital when is appropriate when it creates a necessary in adaptation, right, cash flow. Public budgets cannot close the gap finance alone. Less than 10% of global adaptation finance comes from private sources. Now, great to hear that one third of the private portfolio of the GCF is on adaptation. Adaptation projects, public goods, and avoid losses. And that is the key here. In South Africa, a regional adaptation fund program across Zambia, Zimbabwe, and Eswatini is engaging commercial banks for smallholder agricultural loans and establishing payment schemes for ecosystem services. These four identified areas define key challenges as well as opportunities to unlock adaptation finance in the era of overshoot. As we continue with our distinguished panel, we look forward to hearing from the speakers on how can we address these challenges collectively to enable countries to move forward planning. One last comment that I would make is that in adaptation, as it was mentioned in the previous element, the cost of inaction is extremely high, but we don't calculate from a cash flow point of view and a private sector investment point of view that cost of inaction. We need some accounting rules. We need some elements that change that reality. Now, the insurance industry knows that very well because they are the payout of the physical risks that we are seeing happen more and more often. We need to help the insurance industry recalculate this cost of inaction. Because I've been in development for 35 years, we've always been saying $1 in preparedness saves $15. The World Bank has a calculation of $7. Guess what? We're still not investing the $1 to this day. Why? Answer that question.

Thank you. Thank you. And we've got a wonderful list of speakers who may help to answer that question. I think we all know some of the reasons behind that, and we need to tackle it. Let me first turn to our first speaker, His Excellency Joao Paulo Cabobey Anku. Minister of Environment of Brazil. And if I could just remind everyone as we go into this session, please keep your remarks to under three minutes. Thank you so much. Over to you, Your Excellency.

Thank you. Excellencies, let me try to address these three closely connected questions you proposed. First, an adaptation priority becomes fundable when it's translated into clearly defined intervention supported by reliable data, measurable results, and implementing institution, and an appropriate financing structure. But not every adaptation investment is commercially bankable. Early warning systems, climate information, and local communities and ecosystem protection generate enormous value public value without necessarily generating financial returns. They require public budgets, grants, and concessional finance. Today, the machinery often breaks down during project preparation. Countries know their priorities, but may lack the technical capacity and research to structure investments. Second, country-led platforms can connect national climate plans to budgets, policies, and investment pipelines. In Brazil, our climate plan defines the priorities, while the National Climate Fund, sustainable sovereign bonds, and EcoInvest help turn them into investment. We have substantially increased the resource of the climate fund. while EcoInvest use public research as blended finance to reduce risks and improve financing conditions to mobilize private capital. Public finance could not be replaceable by private investment. It is fundamental to make private investment possible at a scale the market alone would not achieve. Finally, financial institutions must change. Multilateral development banks and the climate funds need to provide more grants and concessional resource, longer maturities, guarantees, and local currency financing. They must also support project preparation, institutional capacity building, and data, not only physical infrastructure. Their assessments must recognize avoided losses, and wider social and environmental benefits. Access to finance must also become faster, simpler, and more predictable. The central shift must be from financing isolated projects supporting coherent, country-led national programs. Domestic public reserves are essential, but they are not sufficient. Without international cooperation and concession of finance, we will not mobilize private capital at the required scale or deliver adaptation where it is needed most. At COP30, Brazil worked to advance the Belem Adaptation Indicators under the United Arab Emirates framework for global climate resilience. We work with Germany, Italy, and UNDP, climate promise to launch the NEPS implementation alliance. At COP31, we must build on this progress and ensure that these indicators help translate global commitments into concrete action. Thank you.

Thank you so much. And I'd now like to call on His Excellency, Juhor Hidayat, Minister of the Environment of Indonesia. Over to you, sir.

Thank you, moderator. Excellencies, distinguished delegates, ladies and gentlemen, the central challenge is not that countries lack adaptation priorities. The challenge is converting those priorities into implementable programs that are financed at the scale of risk. A national adaptation plan is not a pipeline by itself. It becomes deliverable only when priorities are translated into costed programs, credible resilience outcomes, capable delivery institution, prepared investments, environmental and social safeguards, and financing structures that fit the nature of the benefit. Indonesia's National Adaptation Plan for 2026-2030, on the pathway toward 2035, provide an operational framework for this task. It identifies five priority systems: food, water, energy, health, and ecosystem, with disaster risk management as a cross-cutting enabler. It links risk information, institutional roles, national and subnational programming, resource mobilization, technology, capacity and monitoring, evolution and learning. For Indonesia, the implementation chain runs from NAP, National Adaptation Plan priorities to sectoral and subnational programs, then to prioritized pipelines, preparation of and structuring, financing, implementation and monitoring, evaluation and learning. We are strengthening this chain by connecting adaptation priorities with planning and investment pipelines, climate budget tagging, registration and transparency system, and financing intermediation mechanism. The bottleneck is often not the absence of ideas, but gaps in risk data, program preparation, economic evaluation, aggregation of local actions, capacity and risk allocation. Many adaptation actions are small, dispersed and context specific. They need to be aggregated into coherent programs and portfolios so that preparations cost, transaction cost and risk can be managed at meaningful scale. We therefore need country led platform that organize multilateral development banks, climate funds, technical partners and investors around national adaptation plans, not around fragmented pipelines. The task is not to make every adaptation need commercially bankable. It is to match its need with the right kind of finance. While Public goods outcomes require grants and highly concessional finance, while viable resilience investments can mobilize complementary capital. In the context of overshoot, planning should also recognize residual climate risk and connect adaptation with preparedness for response, recovery, and resilient reconstructions when impact exceed adaptation's limit. Indonesia invites partners to work through our national adaptation plan and national subnational system to turn adaptation priorities into coherent, inclusive, and scalable programs. Thank you.

Thank you. I'd now like to call on His Excellency Matthew Samuda, a Minister of Water, Environment and Climate Change of Jamaica. And again, a reminder to please everyone keep remarks brief and focused on the solutions. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Moderator. Excellencies, colleagues, overshoot is something that we are already experiencing the impacts of in Jamaica. In the last Five years, Jamaica has experienced a category five hurricane, a category four hurricane, a tropical storm, four of its five worst droughts on record, tracked for over 100 years, its hottest day on record, its wettest day on record. We're experiencing the impact of overshoot. Now, the financial impact of that is extreme. In the case of Hurricane Melissa last year, it was 12.2 billion US dollars, 56% of GDP. When one compares that to something like Hurricane Katrina, which was 1% of US GDP, then you understand that the impact of overshoot affects us disproportionately. And that is, of course, a concern to the entire developing world. adaptation is critical because without adaptation, the right adaptation funds being allocated and deployed in the best way possible. You're going to have a greater need for capitalization of the loss and damage fund. That is the reality. We can't, you know, function with a fund that doesn't have funds. So, it already needs to be capitalized adequately which is not at this stage. But in looking at adaptation, financing, It is a good sign that the board of the GCF has taken a decision to go to 50% with projects. It is a good sign that the rate of efficiency at the Adaptation Fund in deployment is increasing. But we need to understand that what is being deployed does not meet the needs our assessment for what is required for our water sector, which is a mix of development challenges, some brought about from our own misadventures of the past, others brought about by climate change. The World Bank's assessment is that a country the size of Jamaica needs 5 billion US dollars. That is what we need for water alone. So the adaptation funds available to the developing world simply don't scratch the surface. Then we have the issue of whether or not we're deploying them as efficiently and as quickly as we absolutely need to, 'cause every dollar not deployed sitting in our bank account, not going into wider drains, better coastal revetment, stronger housing infrastructure will contribute to greater losses and loss of life. Now there, we have to anticipate, Jamaica has developed its own systemic risk assessment tool. It is finalizing its own national adaptation plan, and I believe every nation should be doing the same. But we also must plan for these investments and we have to work with the GCFs of the world, the SIFs of the world to ensure that our project pipeline is indeed in line with the national adaptation plan so it comes to life. And thirdly, we have to, from a political perspective, get others to value resilience. There are varying estimates as to, from a climate additionality perspective, what climate change really is costing by way of damage each year, and regardless of which estimate, you take, you realize that it is impacting the global economy in a material manner. But I put to you, Madam Chair, that for the $170 million or so deployed by the Adaptation Fund, that it's in line with 0.1% of US insurance premiums for households last year. We simply need the political will to finance adaptation. That is the core of the issue because there are, we don't need to be overly creative. The industries that will be affected, certainly the general insurance industry has the capacity to significantly increase, whether through the GCFs or the adaptation funds of the world or working with the World Bank, has the capacity to invest in adaptation related financing. Another industry that creates collectible opportunities, it's calculable and collectible because of IATA is certainly the airline industry. There were 5 billion passenger trips last year. Certainly a dollar per passenger trip would not trigger global inflation. So the issue is an issue of political will. UNEP has given us the document bringing together the best science. I want to thank the WMO also for their continued work in this area. But let us not spend too much time on too much creativity and let us find the political backbone that is necessary. Thank you.

Thank you very much. I'd like to pass now to His Excellency Dr. Aliou Gouri Oujf, Minister of Environment and Ecological Transition of Senegal. Over to you. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I will be speaking in French. Excellences.

You're welcome, Secretary-General, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention, ministers, heads of delegations. I would like to, first of all, thank you for the honor given to me to take the floor today on behalf of Senegal on the issue of adaptation. It gives us an opportunity to redefine our collective ambition facing the crisis that is increasingly intensifying. Ladies and gentlemen, for us in Senegal, from our coasts which are eroded down to our droughts, salinization, adaptation is not a strategic option. It's an issue of national survival. We urgently need to move to action and this requires means. Our adaptation efforts were defined in our national contribution and national adaptation plan and this requires effective implementation. In order to move from the idea of adaptation to a funded project, we need to transform it into a funding which is technically solid and which can be implemented. First, you need to have reliable data and show the climate risk you are going after and what gain you expect to obtain. Second, we need to carry out technical feasibility studies, environmental studies, social, economic, financial studies. And thirdly, We need to have a package which combines the public resource, conventional financing, climate funds and private investment. Fourthly, you need to have clear governance. Who carries a project? Who implements a project? How the communities are involved and how do you measure results? And the process very frequently is blocked at that level, not at the level of ideas, but because there is a lack of resources in preparing the project. So the answer is to create national mechanism to prepare projects, which could rapidly mobilize studies, data and the necessary competencies. the real challenge is to go towards investment and implementation. In Senegal, we are far too frequently have a top-down approach. Partners come in sometimes with projects which are already drafted, structured and funded according to their priorities and calendars. But when these projects do not correspond to national priorities, well, then countries can be compelled to accept them because the funding is there and the project is ready. And this is exactly what we need to reverse. Our plan needs to be first a national adaptation plan based on a from the roots up approach, on the basis of a national approach, which enables us to implement our national priorities. Then this has to be integrated into sectoral planning, programming, public funding, and the budgetary processes. We know what vulnerabilities are in Senegal, I just listed them. This includes the fragility of our ecosystems and the erosion of lands, et cetera. And this needs to be transformed into national priority programs. To better fund the priorities of countries, there are four things that need to change. First, financial institutions need to align their resources with the national adaptation plans instead of forcing them to adapt to their plans. Second, access needs to be streamlined and accelerated. Years-long procedures are incompatible with the urgency of the situations. We need to reduce the cost of transaction here. Third, instruments need to be adapted. Instruments have to be concessional and maturity has to be long because adaptation produces long-term gains. It therefore cannot be funded as a usual financing for a project. And fourthly, we need to make sure that there is direct involvement at national and local level. So the change here is clear, go from a fragmented project funded by an institution to a national project which is funded on a large scale and funded by a country. I thank you.

Thank you very much for sharing that experience in Senegal. For the following speakers, I'm going to have to ask you to cut the remarks to two minutes maximum, and I will need to be interrupting. I do apologize, but we want to get to the third session today, which is one of these three critical pillars that need to work together. So I'd like to pass to Dr. Francesco Covaro, Special Envoy for Climate Change of Italy. Thank you.

Okay, done. Excellencies, distinguished colleagues, let me first thank the Secretary General's Climate Action Team for convening this timely dialogue. For Italy, increasing adaptation finance remains essential. Public and concessional finance, in particularly, will remain critical, especially for the most vulnerable countries. and for adaptation investment that cannot generate financial returns. But our experience also tell us that more finance will not be sufficient unless we improve the way countries can access and deploy it. We need a stronger bridge between national priorities, technical assistance, investment preparation, and finance. And we need to build that bridge by making the existing international architectural work better around countries, rather than asking countries to navigate an increasingly complex landscape of institutions and instruments. This principle has guided Italy's engagement in recent years. Under our G7 presidencies, Italy promoted the Adaptation Accelerator Hub, launched at COP29 with the support of G7 and UNDP. The hub is now working with partner countries to translate nationally determined adaptation priorities into more structured investment strategies and pipelines, connecting governments with technical partners and potential sources of public and private finance. At the same time, Italy, together with COP30 presidencies, Germany and UNDP and other partners is supporting the NEP implementation alliance, which brings together countries and international partners to strengthen a coordination of support around the implementation of NEP. Looking towards COP31, we believe the international community should explore how these efforts can progressively converge around a more operational country-focused approach to adaptation investment, one that starts from priorities identified by countries, supports the development of integrated adaptation investment strategies, and brings project preparation, technical assistance, public and concessional finance. The object should not be to create another institution or other layer of coordination. It should be to connect what already exists and make it easier for countries to move from NAP priority to an investment strategy and from an investment strategy to implementation. Such as an approach could be on the experience already emerging through the Adaptation Acceleration Hub, while using the broader potential of NAP implementation alliance and other existing partnership to progressively extend support to more countries. Finally, COP31 could provide an opportunity to demonstrate that this more connected model can work in practice, not through another global commitment, but through our growing set of country lead investment strategy supported by more current international system. Italy stands ready to increasingly support partner countries in this effort and to work with the UNDP and its climate promise G7 partners, financial institution, and the wider international community to advance this approach. Thank you.

Thank you. I'd now like to call on His Excellency, David Mainir, Minister of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment of South Africa. Over to you, Minister.

Thank you, Your Excellencies, to respond to the questions briefly and in under two minutes.

So on the question of adaptation priorities and fundable projects, We say that South Africa's central climate finance challenge is the uneven translation of climate priorities, policy commitments, and available capital into implemented programs and, of course, operating assets. For South Africa and many developing countries, building a solid pipeline of adaption projects and programs that turn the planning instruments and priorities into action is an urgent necessity. And in this context, there is a need for technical and institutional support in project development within the adaption space. On the question of country-led investment plans, it's recognized that country-led investment platforms can help connect national priorities to project preparation, financing, and implementation. And South Africa's emerging initiatives include the Just Adaptation Resilience Investment Platform, and also, of course, the Climate Investment Platform. The Climate Investment Platform is designed as a national coordination and financing mechanism that will act as a climate country hub, enabling programmatic investment at scale for a significant and effective response to climate change in South Africa. On the question of better financing adaptation priorities, we say that international finance architecture needs to support areas that go well beyond traditional infrastructure investment. In 2025, the Green Climate Fund grant of more than 40 million US dollars was received by the South African National Biodiversity Institute and invested in ecosystem-based disaster risk reduction, which benefited more than 5 million South Africans, particularly in vulnerable communities. And these incentives, of course, or initiatives, do not necessarily yield return on investment in a conventional financial sense, but they do protect communities from floods, support water security, protect biodiversity, and reduce future public expenditure. And they amount to doing things differently and should be seriously considered by multinational.

Development banks.

Thank you.

Thank you so much. I'd now like to turn to Marco Negrete Jimenez, Director General for Multilateral Strategy for, perfect, from Mexico. From Mexico. Thank you. Over to you.

Muchas gracias.

Thank you very much.

I'll be brief.

And I'll tell you about what we're doing in Mexico in the Rio Valses area.

This is a project that is being financed by the Green Climate Fund, as well as the.

Government of Mexico, in an area covering seven states, basin covering seven states, particularly poor areas, and where we have indigenous people. And this is a successful project. And we've got almost 700,000 hectares under climate surveillance, adaptation of ecosystems, which includes payment for environmental services directly to indigenous local communities, soil conservation and recovery. through traditional practices in addition to scientific knowledge and a greater community capacity to address things such as forest fires.

Which includes 580 people trained to tackle forest fires and finally we're including climate.

Priorities in planning strategies in these areas.

These are projects that are being led by the government of Mexico but they also include the.

Community vision including gender issues. It shows that international funding and national ownership and community agency can lead to climate resistance and resilience.

Thank you very much.

Thank you very much for sharing those successes from Mexico. I'd now like to pass to Ms. Teri Badegashin, Chief Executive Officer of the Climate Investment Funds. Over to you.

Thank you. When it comes to adaptation and resilience, Countries on the front lines of climate impacts know what's at stake, and they know that resilience investments are increasingly a matter of survival, and they're already setting out clear and urgent priorities. Today's session poses a critical question of what actually turns an adaptation priority into fundable pipelines. 17 years ago, with our six MDB partners, the SIF launched the world's first large-scale resilience program to help respond to that call. Our experience over the nearly two decades from weather insurance in Cambodia, climate smart irrigation in Mozambique, to coastal defenses in Samoa, and early warning systems in Jamaica, is that resilience becomes investable when countries have these three things. First, access to catalytic capital to help prove new approaches, establish new markets, and take risks that otherwise would be difficult to absorb. Second, support creating an enabling environment that provides enough certainty for private finance to come in, project preparation facilities, feasibility studies, and the right policies and frameworks. Thirdly, convening power and budgeting. Investments are more likely to succeed when they are anchored alongside ministries of finance, linking to broader economic priorities, rallying the various line ministries and actors around a coherent national vision and economic development strategy. These lessons are the foundation of our next generation resilience program called Arise. Arise is putting countries in the driver's seat to set their own priorities, working with ministries of finance to address policy, capacity, and investment barriers simultaneously. And it provides catalytic finance to unlock private capital as well, with 40% of the program going to the private sector. In April, we launched the call for expression of interest, and the response has been overwhelming. 75 countries and regions have stepped forward with ideas for working with local businesses, banks, intermediaries, setting up funds, et cetera. Building resilience is a socially just imperative, but it is also an increasing economic one, a $1 trillion opportunity, according to McKinsey. And this is where we can leverage private finance, do more work, and make the sovereign investment case for what economic value can be derived from resilience investments. Colleagues, I close by saying that the needs are clear, the solutions exist, and it's time to put these lessons to work today. Thank you.

Thank you very much. I'd now like to turn to our colleague, Mr. Elchin Alaverdiyev, head of Climate Diplomacy Department at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Azerbaijan. Over to you.

Thank you, Madam moderator, excellencies, distinguished colleagues. Adaptation can no longer be treated as a secondary investment priority. As climate risk intensifies, the cost of delayed action continues to rise, threatening lives, livelihoods, and economic development. The Baku to Belem roadmap to 1.3 trillion, prepared jointly by the COP29 presidency of Azerbaijan and COP30 presidency of Brazil, recognizes that adaptation finance must be central to achieving the 1.3 trillion annual climate finance goal by 2035. However, the challenge is not only the volume of the finance, but also its accessibility, affordability, predictability, and suitability to the country's needs. National adaptation plans and related strategies already identify many of the country's priorities. What is often missing is the machinery to translate them into bankable projects and investment plans. We must recognize the particular nature of adaptation investment in this case. While some generate significant economic and social benefits, they may not produce direct financial returns. Yet preventing climate-related losses protects infrastructure, economic activity, and investments across all sectors. This means investment in adaptation does generate economic value. For the, for these reasons, MDBs, climate funds, and other financial institutions should deploy grants, highly concessional finance, and other non-debt creating instruments where appropriate, particularly for vulnerable countries with limited fiscal space. At the same time, we need to better demonstrate the economic value of avoided losses. and resilience benefits in investment decisions. Reducing the cost of capital, easing burdensome co-financing requirements, simplifying approval and accreditation procedures, and strengthening the direct access and participation of national entities will further facilitate the implementation of adaptation activities and help deliver more effective outcomes. As COP29 presidency, we will continue to working with all partners to translate the commitments made in Baku into concrete actions and ensure that adaptation finance reaches the countries and communities that need it most. This matter will remain in the center of the delivering of our joint mandate with COP30 and COP31 presidencies under the Belem Mission 1.5, and we will try to explore the potential of adaptation in the solution areas of the final report that we are currently working on. Thank you.

Thank you so much. I would now like to turn to Mr. Mikko Olikainen, head of the Adaptation Fund. And apologies on the phrasing there.

Thank you, Madam Moderator, and thank you to the Secretary-General's Climate Action Team for bringing together governments, climate funds, development banks, and financial institutions focus on implementation and delivery. The central question really is how to finance adaptation and resilience at scale and speed that's required. Developing countries face growing climate impacts while at the same time facing needs to finance development, infrastructure, energy access, and economic transformation. Yet many vulnerable countries continue to face high borrowing costs, debt constraints, and limited access to affordable finance. The Adaptation Fund's grant-based model is therefore critically important. Adaptation needs are estimated at 310 to 365 billion US dollars annually by 2035 and will increase with climate overshoot, while available finance remains far below that level. The Adaptation Fund's continued shortfall against its own $300 million annual resource mobilization target underscores the need to strengthen the mechanisms that are proven and that deliver. So what turns an adaptation priority into a fundable project? Many countries already have clear plans and investment priorities. The challenge is implementation. Financeable projects require adequate preparation, sound data, the ability to aggregate interventions, and appropriate risk allocation. Readiness support, project preparation, and institutional strengthening are therefore essential. The Adaptation Fund has committed more than 1.6 billion US dollars through over 220 projects and programs in more than 100 countries, including more than 400 early warning systems. Over 40 projects have subsequently been scaled up through larger financing mechanisms, demonstrating the value of combining community action with policy, institutional and knowledge components. We should move toward country-led investment platforms, combining grants, concessional finance, technical assistance and larger scale investment around national priorities and through direct access. Let me conclude with three recommendations. One, to strengthen coherence around country-led priorities. Second, invest in project preparation, institutional capacity and implementation. And third, expand affordable finance through grants, concessional resources and risk reduction instruments. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you so much. I'd now like to pass to Mathilde Laurence, Deputy Executive Director of the Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage. Over to you, please. Mathilde.

Thank you, Ellen. I'm here. Thank you very much. And it's an honor really to be here contributing on behalf of the Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage to this very important conversation. We heard it loud and clear from the previous speakers, from all that you conveyed, adaptation finance plays a critical role as it helps reduce future risk, build resilience, and support long-term development. What I'd like to bring in the conversation today is the sense of urgency. The last summer in the Northern Hemisphere has seen all sorts of shocks from heat waves, wildfires, droughts, as well as a terrible glacial flooding in Nepal, while the world is already facing the strongest El Nino of all time, posing high threats to the most vulnerable countries and communities. In practice, many countries face a reality where increasing climate impacts are already driving higher fiscal pressure, rising response and recovery expenditure crowds out investment capacity, both public and private. This is where the Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage complements rather than competes with adaptation finance. The FRLD is designed to address the impact that remain despite adaptation efforts, the economic and non-economic losses and damages that developing countries are already facing and cannot avoid or fully adapt to. By funding response and recovery, From both extreme and slow onset events, the Fund can help protect and restore livelihoods, support larger scale recovery and reconstruction, and reduce the disabling macroeconomic effects of climate change. More broadly, FRLD, alongside other international climate funds, some of them who speak just before me, can support countries in developing comprehensive climate financing strategies using the right instruments for the right purpose. How? At the FRLD, it is very clear that this answer can only be country-owned and country-led. What are the risks the countries will face? Who and where are the most vulnerable communities? What tools are already existing? We believe that the FRLD can play a role in this landscape at the country's request and complementary to other stakeholders. When we closed our call for funding request on June 15, we had received 176 applications amounting to 2.8 billion from 119 countries. And we are already learning from this funding request. 77 funding requests received under this call for funding request include cash transfers, cash for work schemes, community grants. 68 include insurance and risk transfer, which is a headway to the next session, of course. Just to close with the core perspective that I want to bring to the table, we must drive for complementarity among players as we develop a suite of solution, together, this solution make more sense and help stretch the limited resources we have. As the fund will grow and scale, we will develop more tools, we'll be more flexible, more accessible, always more affordable. We are willing to drive this smart collaboration that optimize our limited resources and avoid duplication of effort to respond to the needs of vulnerable countries.

Thank you. Thank you so much. And last but certainly not least in this segment, we have Ms. Yamide Dagne, who is Senior Vice President at the Natural Resources Defense Council. Over to you.

Thank you. Yes, thank you very much. So with gratitude to you, moderators, and to the UNSG team for elevating this issue, I am glad to present with the Atlantic Council and NRDC a journey which is called Fostering Investible National Implementation for Adaptation and Resilience. It's a journey, an activation plan, and certainly not yet another initiative because as you heard today, there's many. We're trying to turn what many have described as essential as a foundation, all the plans that have been already produced. to turn their priorities, opportunities into magnets of capital stocks and to bring also the private sector to play its role. That requires, as many have said, convening different private sector, the real economy, with the financial institutions together to do what we heard and enabling environment, feasibility and data, risk allocation, regulatory conditions, but more importantly, transform, I think, from risk cost into value and benefit sharing. I would like to say that we are already part of many efforts that were mentioned, the NAP Implementation Alliance, BRIDGE, the country platforms. We need to connect the dots and figuring out that missing middle. A number of our partners have already spoken and will be speaking later today. We can make the cost and the investment for adaptation and resilience cheaper, faster. We can do the right thing together. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you so much, and thank you all in this session for sharing such rich experiences and initiatives and examples from countries where we are seeing adaptation plans turning into investable and funded approaches forward. I won't try to summarize it, but I know the Secretary at the team in the UN have taken notes on all of these examples. I'd now love to pass to my colleague, Jorge Gastelum, who is the senior director of the Atlantic Council for Climate Resilience Center, to take us forward into the third session. As we do so, I will note again, please keep remarks short. We are going to be losing interpretation at this point, but we'll be able to continue for a bit longer to share the experience of others in the third session. Over to you, Jorge.

Thank you, Helen. Your Excellencies, distinguished delegates and esteemed colleagues, we have a problem, we have a challenge. No, it's not adapting in an era of overshoot, but it's to close the session with a little time that we have left. We already overshoot in time. And I don't want to bring levity to this because it's a very important issue, but I really plead you if we can keep very short interventions directly into what we're meant to be discussing. So we have discussed how countries can anticipate risk, one, session one. We have discussed how to identify what must be delivered and the needs, session two, segment two. The final question now is whether we can create the financial headroom to act and what is needed to actually make that happen. So that is a real test of any financial instrument. It's not that it's innovative, it's not the next golden golden opportunity, but whether it changes what a country can afford to do. For countries facing high borrowing costs and limited fiscal space, it must create room to invest in resilience before losses mount. This is critical. Our final session asks how the existing toolbox that we have represented here can meet that test for the countries that need it the most. And I just wanted to also highlight that this segment is the only one in which we're bringing private financial sector to a discussion. And this is critical, as my father and several have said before, we need to rethink the way we engage to deliver. And it's not anymore a choice, it has to, it's a must. So with that, let me open up the interventions, keep them very targeted to this question, how the existing toolbox can meet the test for the countries that need it the most. I will pass it now to His Excellency Stephen Victor, Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries, and Environment of Palau. The floor is yours.

Thank you, moderator. For small island developing states, the era of climate overshoot is not an abstract future scenario. We are already confronting increasingly severe climate impacts. Naming overshoot is not the same as accepting it. 1.5 degree remains our limit. Every 10th of a degree, every year above it will be counted on our islands, on our reefs, our water supplies, and our lives. For island nations, climate risk become physical risk overnight. We know what the solutions are. The problem is international financial architecture is not delivering the adaptation finance at speed, scale, and terms required. National adaptation plans and other country-led strategies should therefore become a basis for predictable programmatic financing, not simply a catalogue from which financiers select the projects that fits their own criteria. States have experience in implementing these financial instruments. However, As of today, they work on a deal at a time with few countries with the capacity to negotiate them. But this needs to change. And in order to do so, we must first make these financial instruments a norm. Protection against disaster should be built into financing arrangements from the start, ready before the storms arrive, so no island has to negotiate relief in the middle of recovery. Second, The need to keep the cost of the vulnerable. The cost of accessing these financial tools should be met by providers as part of their adaptation finance and should not be paid out of island budgets already stretched by recovery and debt. Finally, use of such tools for what it can do. Insurance help with sudden shocks. Sea level rise is slow and certain and it calls for sustained finance. for adaptation and support through the fund for responding to loss and damage where limits are crossed. Thank you.

Thank you so much. Then let me pass the floor to His Excellency, JS Gasper, Minister in Assistance to the President and the Environment of the Republic of Marshall Islands. The floor is yours.

Thank you, Chair, Excellencies, fellow ministers, ladies and gentlemen. I'm glad to be joining you today to discuss this critical issue. Let me say one thing upfront. The best form of adaptation is prevention. Transitioning away from fossil fuel is the single most important thing we can do to make adaptation possible and ultimately to save money. This is more important than ever as the prospect of overshoot is increasingly part of the conversation. Right now, the Marshall Islands estimates adaptation costs run into the billions of dollars. Our small atoll economy simply cannot carry the burden on its own. For us, adaptation is not one project or one sector. It is near total effort across all of our islands, our communities, and our entire economic zone. And make no mistake, we are grateful for the support we have received, but accessing that support has been a heavy lift. At times, we spend almost as much effort applying for funding and reporting back to donors as we are implementing the adaptation measures set out in our National Adaptation Plan. Take, for example, a new seawall that we built on Ewa. It took 10 years, two years to build, eight years to plan. That's just too long for the impacts we're facing. And so far, donors are not supporting the implementations of our NAP as a whole. They are supporting individual elements that match their own priorities, often through short-term projects. That is why we created the Marshall Islands Resilience and Adaptation Trust Fund, or the MIRA. We designed MIRA to be a one-stop shop where partners can contribute with confidence, knowing that the resources will go directly towards our adaptation priorities. It has a strong governance arrangement, and we are seeding it with our own national resources. Please consider this invitation. We welcome the opportunity to speak with any partner interested in supporting MIRA. Because the reality is simple. No one understands how to adapt to our islands better than our own communities. We need more finance flowing directly to national and regional own mechanisms that allow countries to lead their own adaptations. It is sometimes difficult to understand what it will take for those who are not in the front lines of this crisis to value prevention as much as the cure. Last year, we agreed to triple adaptation finance. We had previously agreed to double it by $40 billion. But by my arithmetic, that leaves us talking about $120 billion. Perhaps we should increase the incentive by saying that if the $120 billion is not delivered, the shortfall should go directly to the loss and damage fund with interest. Of course, that is intentionally provocative, but for countries like mine, the consequences are not theoretical. We cannot afford to prepare for today. We will pay for it tomorrow. And the cost will not only be financial, it will be measured in livelihoods, communities, culture, and human lives. We understand that there are constraints on the donor side. But whether through a new financial instrument or simply improving access to existing finance, there still seems to be a lack of urgency behind delivery. Improving access in one area is one area where we can make immediate differences. This is this is low hanging fruit that is practically touching the floor. It requires donor countries and institutions to change their procedures, simplify and coordinate application processes, recognize accreditations across the financial mechanisms so we can prioritize direct access and crucially approve multiyear programmatic support for adaptation. These are not reforms that should take another year or two. These are changes that could be made now, ahead of COP, to demonstrate what real delivery looks like. So I want to issue a challenge to all my fellow ministers from here, from donor countries, to go home and speak with your finance ministers, explain to them what overshoot will mean for countries like mine, and ask the very simple question, what can we do now? Because many of the solutions already exist, whether we choose to use them is ultimately a question of political will. And I also want to challenge once again the way that we talk about investability or adaptation, because I do not think we are always using the same definition. For us, the return on investment from adaptation is resilience, the resilience for our people, our livelihoods, our infrastructure, and our ecosystems. For conventional investors, investability often means generating on a financial return. and generating it quickly. We are constantly being asked to make our adaptation proposals more investable, but many of our adaptation measures, that simply does not make sense. We need to collectively accept that grants and highly concessional finance remains today the forms of finance that vulnerable countries need most. And to close, I know the finance situation is difficult. I know fighting climate change is difficult, but our obligations under the Paris Agreement does not disappear because we simply, because delivery becomes difficult. We are facing a colossal task in the Marshall Islands, and we need to keep these promises. Just last week, we hosted a UN meeting on loss and damage in Madrid. Participants were able to see first hand what vulnerability looks like on a small atoll, and many of them were struck by what they saw. That experience reinforced something that we have been saying for years. The solutions are known, the needs are clear, and there are approaches that already work. Now we need to scale them up and we need to do it with urgency, como dada, and I thank you.

Thank you. Thank you so much. The invitation is put out for the Marshall Islands Resilience Fund. I will pass now to, and I really appreciate keeping the time and interventions short because we would like to start closing the session soon, His Excellency Ole Thonke, Climate Ambassador of Denmark. The floor is yours.

Thank you so much.

Ole couldn't make it, but I'm here for him. Thank you. For Denmark, planning, budgeting, prioritisation, of course, are the foundation for building stronger resilience and attracting investments for adaptation. And Denmark supports efforts to build domestic capacity to take climate risks into account in national planning and budgeting. Clearly, international finance, and that includes, of course, public finance, continues to play its role as support for the most vulnerable and least developed, not least, and as a means to mobilise investments from other sources. Innovative finance and blended finance are effective tools to also unlock investments to climate action. We, Denmark, remain committed to development cooperation. We spend 0.7% of our GDP every year. We've done that for 40 plus years. Of that, 30% now is dedicated to climate, and with the majority of this, around 60% targeted to adaptation finance. We are a strong supporter of the two dedicated financing mechanisms for loss and damage. And our focus for adaptation and loss and damage on the most climate vulnerable countries, of course, is on the LDCs and the SIDS, but we also try to mobilize adaptation financing for middle income countries. So while a significant part of the Danish ODA is still grants for the least developed and the most vulnerable, we are trying to put efforts into using our ODA catalytic to engage private sector, which we will hear more about, I guess, later, and to mobilize finance. So providing blended finance, guarantees, de-risking, enabling conditions, it's really key for more investments into adaptation. To conclude, Public funding will not suffice for rising costs of adaptation. Innovative finance and domestic resource mobilization, of course, necessary also. Thank you so much.

Thank you so much. Very true. Now we are moving to Ms. Diana Aconcha, Director General for Climate Action of the European Commission. Okay. So we'll continue then with the program. The next speaker that I would like to invite to take the floor is Mr. David Maslo, Chief Executive Officer of the African Risk Capacity Group.

Thank you, moderator. Moderator, Africa does not lack instruments. We have parametric insurance, contingent credit, catastrophe bond, prevent humanitarian finance, but what we like is scale. At the African Risk Capacity and along other regional developmental insurers, we pull over 2 billion US dollars every year of drought, flood, tropical cyclone risk across all our member states, and no countries can carry this alone.

One country alone is an expensive risk.

ARC covers 23 governments every year, and we spread across different climates. and through a diversified book. This is the whole logic behind a mutual insurance. We should acknowledge that many countries still need premium support and that this will be true for some years.

But the risk arising while the development.

Budgets are shrinking, so we should not plan around support that may not be there tomorrow.

The question is how to structure it.

Concentrate it where it goes furthest and set a path where the government can take more over time.

Capital is half of the solution.

The other half is volume.

African institutions, development banks, humanitarian agencies, infrastructure funds.

They all carry climate and disaster risk on their own balance sheet today. Where it makes sense to see that risk to a pool, a volatile exposure becomes a predictable cost. Volume builds the portfolio, and the portfolio can grow, and growth is what eventually attracts capital on commercial terms.

Subsidies gets us started. Volume is what helps us to stand on our own.

And because ARC is a not-for-profit mutual insurance company, when we perform, the surplus goes back to the member states as free or discounted covers in capacity building.

We believe insurance for development is fiscal infrastructure.

That means building it in how we finance agriculture, health, and infrastructures.

Is important and not treating it as a separate climate instrument.

When we price the risk honestly, we can also price resilience, and what can be priced can be financed.

I thank you.

Thank you so much. Extremely concrete, right to the point, short. Next, I would like to invite Ms. Sarah Jane Ahmed, Managing Director of the Climate Vulnerable Forum. The floor is yours.

Thank you, Chair. Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, the CVF 20 comprises 74 member states, and we would have been 20% wealthier if not for climate change. And so as global temperatures reached 1.65 centigrade above pre-industrial levels just this past month, the lived reality of overshoot is indistinguishable from failure. Now over to the solutions. So we have worked on climate prosperity plans and strategies, and we're finding a few things. One is we need shared market infrastructure, credit bureaus, electronic money transfers, analytics. These these can reduce costs for everyone and is relatively inexpensive. Standardizing the diagnostic and the building blocks of instruments is important rather than every solution. The landscape is just too varied for a one-size-fits-all. but technical elements such as analytics, contract terms, these are universal. As important as standardizing these parts is introducing them to the market. That is what we are doing with the V20 100 Banks program, getting the basics standardized and introduced into at least one to two financial institutions across the CVF V20 states as quickly as we can. National institutions, as we know, rarely produce the headline leverage ratios that donors typically ask for, but what they change instead is the underlying dynamics of how capital is allocated and used inside a country. A national institution changes how every future transaction gets done and the job one creates. That is a more durable return. For example, Ghana has the Ghana Infrastructure Investment Fund, and they are opening a climate sub-fund as part of implementation of their prosperity plan. Sri Lanka is also seeking a national development bank focused on green industry. National institutions need to be supported by favorable financing terms and modern partnerships. This is why the V20, under the presidency of Barbados, is working with 16 development finance institutions through the Vulnerability to Viability Compact. DFI instruments need to be tailored to suit front-loaded investments needs of adaptation in health, water, and education through long maturities and affordable capital. As long as US Treasury yields anchor global rates, capital costs will remain elevated for climate-vulnerable countries. And so grants and concessional finance are especially important to ensure that we do not overshoot fiscal and financial sustainability. We need MDBs, DFIs, programs to be linked with regional risk pools, such as ARC and PICRIC that I see here on the table. A reformed international financial system needs solidarity from advanced economies through interoperability of MDBs and DFIs. National institutions and regional institutions within countries serve as the link between the multilateral system and private capital. So these are our starting points to realize durable development and climate prosperity. Thank you.

Excellent points. Again, extremely concrete, real. Thank you, Sara. Let me give the floor now to Ms. Elizabeth Henderson, Chief Sustainability Officer of Aeon.

Thank you, and thank you for having us here today. I work for Aon, which is a global insurance brokerage company. And I want to just really lay out a little bit of our perspective from the insurance industry around the challenge of resilience and financing adaptation. First, I want to point out that the insurance industry has paid out more than $2.5 trillion in losses due to natural disasters since the year 2000. Eight out of the last 10 years, we've paid out more than $100 billion in claims, well above the long-term average. Losses are certainly being impacted by climate change in the impact on frequency and severity of disasters. But we also know that losses are driven by the fact that lack of climate intuition and data in land use, planning, new developments, infrastructure, building codes, as well as the overarching impact of inflation on how expensive it is to repair and rebuild after these events occur. The result is that insurance premiums have become more costly. Insurance affordability is no longer a guarantee, even in developed parts of the world. And in very high risk areas, we are seeing availability of insurance become more and more of a challenge. For that reason, resilience must become part of any conversation around development, whether it's large scale infrastructure projects or even addressing individual home and community ability to withstand natural disasters. And we often talk about the value of adaptation and resilience being in the avoided future loss. But I would argue that the economic impact of not having access to insurance and not having access to a viable insurable market is a business risk and a community risk that can be quantified in any ROI calculation of resilience. I have two examples of things that we've done at Aon to try to bring insurance capital in to drive resilience in country and other parts of the world. First is last year, Hurricane Melissa made landfall in the Caribbean, hitting Jamaica. And we heard from the representative from Jamaica about the economic toll that that event took. What we didn't talk about is that there was a catastrophe bond that Jamaica had purchased. that paid out $150 million in losses within five weeks directly to Jamaica to help them with the recovery and rebuilding after that event. The additional benefit of those payments coming in so quickly is that by December of last year, Moody's increased their sovereign debt rating of Jamaica, citing their ability to respond after the natural disaster, including such instruments as the cat bond. The other great news is that Jamaica has decided to repurchase the bond again, and they're continuing to gauge in the financial support that the insurance industry can provide. But we know that that is just one example. And in order to scale, we want to use a resilience framework that Aon is launching and embedding in how we go to market with our private sector clients, but also working with more public sector countries, cities, and sovereign entities. in order to embed an insurance view of risk into decision making so that we can funnel investment money into the projects and into the environment where it's going to have the biggest impact to drive that resilience ROI. Thank you.

So I've been told that we have basically two more minutes to leave the room. So I'm going to ask, I'm going to take this question. against Carolina's advice. I'm gonna ask both IDB and COMEX representatives to be very short, one minute interventions so all of us can benefit from your wisdom, at the same time from the different perspectives you might bring to the table. So I'll go with Abhinash, Mr. Abhinash Persaud, Special Advisor on Climate Change to the President of the Inter-American Development Bank.

We can scale up our tools, existing tools, to meet the challenge. We have to be systemic to do that. There are three systemic ways of doing that. Firstly, we need a resilient financial system. We need pause clauses in all of our debt instruments, not just the MDB instruments. This will cost nothing to create a global financial system that's shock absorbing. We can lend to countries for them to build resilient infrastructure. At the moment, we lend to them over 20 years. If we lend to them over 40 years and 50 years, this infrastructure lasts that long, we can dramatically reduce the cost and countries can afford to build resilience. Donors can provide guarantees to the AAA MDBs at almost no cost to them for us to extend those maturities. And finally, MDBs now have much more lending headroom if a of that is used for debt swaps for those countries that can't afford more debt and those are debt for resilience swaps, we can fund resilience in countries with too much debt for more finance.

Abhinash, absolutely brilliant. Thank you. Rachel, let me just introduce you, Chief Sustainability Officer of Convex Insurance and Co-Chair of Insurance Development Forum Risk Modeling Steering Group. Thank you. The floor is yours. There you go.

Hi, so very quickly, I think I would just add to say that, you know, we're an insurer of the natural catastrophes that were being described earlier. There are some good examples of how, of these types of arrangements being scaled for countries that weren't previously buying quite such extent of natural catastrophe cover. So for example, right at the moment, Thailand, they're placing in the market a $2 billion natural catastrophe cover, which is protecting 30 million residential units for flood, earthquake, and windstorm, and that is an arrangement the government, the local insurance industry and the global private reinsurance markets. Over 90% of that 2 billion is being placed in the global private reinsurance market. So that's a good example of a country doing that. How can that be scaled across multiple countries, especially smaller ones? The World Bank could be instrumental in creating large, well-diversified risk pools and providing the ease of execution, which is crucial to private markets, in this case, the insurers. Using MIGA, for example, could be an effective way for this purpose, and I understand the World Bank are looking at ways in which that can be done. But I would say that multilateral development banks and other agencies need to move much faster and be more agile. We have the tools, the engagement and the will, but deal teams, for example, cannot nurse a project for two years. There are institutions like the Insurance Development Forum, which we are a member of, we do a lot of work with them in developing capacity in countries, et cetera, we work with institutions like Global or DRR, et cetera, and other institutions. We can do the homework, but there has to be the vision, the commitment, and the ambition to allow risk transfer at scale. Thank you.

Thank you so much, Rachel. I know that was rushed, but you made your point very clear. So I won't summarize this discussion, but over time, I will just use two words. radical collaboration. If we don't figure out a way to come together and work together in this era of overshoot, then we'll just continue seeing that overshoot getting bigger and bigger and bigger. Thank you so much for your attention, for staying with us, and for this dialogue.

Good afternoon.

My apologies. I mix up. I'm to open and not the moderators. I'm sorry. Yeah.

So, good afternoon. Please, Selwyn.

No. So, I was patiently waiting for the moderators but it's late in the day but I really want to thank all of you for being here and to be part of this really important finance solution dialogue. And the finance solution dialogue is the last of the solution dialogues today because it brings everything together, everything that we've been discussing, adaptation, the energy transition, methane. And in this room, every part of the financial system is represented, governments, multilateral development banks, climate funds, development finance institutions, philanthropies, and the private sector. We're in the first year of the second decade of the Paris Agreement. This COP marks the beginning of the second decade of implementation of the Paris Agreement. And over the course of that first decade, since the adoption of the agreement, progress has been made. MDBs are doing a lot more, not enough, but a lot more. Climate funds are delivering more resources. Private investment is growing. And thanks to our colleagues from Azerbaijan, we were able to agree on a new finance goal just two years ago. But as I said, we're still not where we need to be. And if we're going to accelerate the energy transition, not only for climate purposes, but to ensure energy access, energy security, independence, and take profit of the lowering costs of renewable energy, we really need the finance system to work as a system. So I really want this dialogue, and I really encourage all of you, and I've said this repeatedly, I know you have really great prepared statements, No. No. I want this dialogue to focus on four interdependent challenges, and some might say opportunities. Scale, access, affordability, and impact. There's no real scale if finance can't be accessed. Access means little if the terms are unaffordable. or deepen debt distress, and greater volumes mean little unless they deliver real impact. These are not four separate problems or challenges. This is one challenge. So I want to hear solutions. So those prepared statements, please cast them aside. How do we dramatically increase public and private finance while directing far more towards the developing world? Developing countries are not a monolithic group; there are differences. How do we simplify access and shorten timelines? How do we lower the cost of capital, tackle debt and create fiscal space? Countries need to invest in adaptation and mitigation. And how do we build on the innovations that are already showing what is possible, those innovations that emerge over the course of the first decade of implementation of the Paris Agreement, the pre-enriched finance, the debt for climate and debt for nature swaps, the climate resilient debt clauses, and I see Pat and Avi, you know, you guys have done a lot in that space, so I don't expect you to read any of your prepared notes. And how do we ensure that every dollar that is invested, it gets greater impact? The reality is that a decade on, we know the gaps and we know what the solutions are. So how do we deliver speed and scale on these four interrelated challenges and opportunity? With that, I give the floor to my colleague and very good friend, the Secretary-General's Special Envoy on Financing for Development, Mahmoud, the floor is yours to help us set the scenes and then our two distinguished colleagues and moderators will take over the job of moderating what I know will be an excellent and fruitful discussion. Mahmoud, the floor is yours.

Right, good afternoon, Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, it's a great pleasure and honor to have this task of trying to set the scene, though that my good friend Selwyn already did that and raised the expectations as well of what he is expecting from this session, not just him, everyone participating. So I know that I'll be stopped at some stage abruptly, so I'll just, we'll share with you at beginning my intentions. I'll be talking about the three lines of defense, the mitigation, the adaptation, and dealing with the challenges related to the loss and damage. And many of us heard our Secretary General reflecting on those three areas this morning. Then with the good work of my good friend Amar Bhattacharya and his colleagues, There are some inputs of relevance that started actually when we're preparing for COP27 in Egypt a few months after Glasgow and with the establishment of the independent high-level experts group that served the COP27, COP28, and then of course from Baku to Belm, they highlighted.

The gaps.

Of finance and how to do some proper work in bridging the gap, including the promise of the 1.3 trillion. And now we have three pillars that I'll be discussing. If I'm successful in doing that, I'll just go through a few areas of focus on the deliverables. But I attended the previous session And I would say that the connection between the discussion, the previous session, this one is very clear that the direction of travel is very much clear unless you want really to make it ambiguous. We are after the delivery of the Paris Agreement, but the pace and the effective mobilization of funds and the means of implementation are leaving a lot to be desired. This shouldn't really be perceived or understood as any kind of ignoring or undermining some of the important work that individual institutions have been doing during the last few years. But collectively, there are gaps when it comes to the quantity of finance, quality of finance, speed, and the terms of finance, especially the cost of capital facing developing economies and emerging markets. This is much close what Serwan just mentioned now on the expectations when it comes to scale, the reach or access, speed and impact. So based on this three pillars simple approach that is being developed, based on the work that we learned from Baku to Berlin and beyond, building as well on the preparation of COP31 with the country of famous bridges, there are areas as well of focus in this area on how to connect the ambitious targets with the means of funding.

The first pillar.

Is country-led investment for sustainable growth, climate, and resilience. That could be translated in having country platforms. And this has been emphasized in different approaches of work. We have been seeing many promises from many countries, but there are areas here about seriousness of these country platforms and to what extent there is a buy-in in, even after their announcements, collectively by government, by the society, and whether we have an adequate finance starting with the budget. Because, as we have seen in many plans, many strategies, many NAPS, many indices, there are many objectives being outlined. There are many strategies out there. But people with simple minds and practical approaches to life, coming from my farming background, will ask a simple question. If it is not in the budget, it doesn't exist. If the ministers of finance are not seeing it as a priority with their parliaments, there is something that is really very much missing. Using the good wisdom of the former Bank of England governor, Mervyn King, you can always share your affection and love to something and you call it a priority. And you can be even guided by the Beatles song, All You Need Is Love. But in our area and project finance, we might need to resort to the good, another song, quoting again, Melvin King, in a very serious discussions at the IMFC of the IMF, that you can go to the ABBA when they are really singing, "Money, money, money." So here, money coming from public sources, private sources,