UNIDO Climate Adaptation and Industrial Resilience Forum 2026

Ladies and gentlemen. Ladies and gentlemen, distinguished guests, welcome to Vienna. I hope you're all doing well. I'm Hilda, your MC, and it's my pleasure to welcome our first speakers who will be giving us a welcome remark today. Honorable Isifu, Mr. Barboza, Mr. Zhu, and Mr. Mhlanga, please join me on stage. And with that, it is my pleasure to Welcome, Mr. Mhlanga, Director, Division of Climate Innovation and Montreal Protocol, Directorate of Technical Cooperation and Sustainable Industrial Development for UNIDO. Please welcome Mr. Mhlanga.

Thank you.

Thank you. And, um, Excellencies, distinguished delegates, ladies and gentlemen, colleagues, on behalf of the United Nations Industrial Development Organization, UNIDO, I am particularly honored to welcome you to this inaugural UNIDO Climate Adaptation and Industrial Resilience Forum of 2026, co-hosted by the Division of Climate Innovation and Montreal Protocol and the Division of Funding Partner Relations. Yes, aligned with the UNIDO Climate Action Plan 2025 to 2029 and the key outcomes of COP30, the forum aims to achieve the following 3 objectives. First, to serve as a global public-private convening platform that positions adaptation not only as a climate justice imperative, but also as an investable opportunity that mobilizes grant-based, concessional, and complementary private financing at scale to have transformative solutions. Second, to support countries and industries in co-creating actionable and investable adaptation pathways spanning sectors, value chain, and enterprises. And third, to strengthen UNIDO's position as the partner of choice for our member states in advancing industrial adaptation thereby promoting inclusive and sustainable industrial development. Climate change is here, and its impacts are growing more severe. It is reshaping our world at an unprecedented pace. No country, no community, or institution is immune to the risks of droughts, floods, extreme heat, ecosystem degradation. Effectively, climate change is a systemic risk, so effective adaptation is no longer optional. It is essential for safeguarding lives, livelihoods, and development gains. Climate adaptation requires collective action. Grounded in strong partnerships that bring together governments, international organizations, the private sector, civil society, and local communities. By pooling our collective knowledge, aligning resources, and coordinating efforts, we can build climate resilient, resilient systems and industries that are stronger than the sum of their parts. We at UNIDO, we position climate adaptation as a catalyst for productive transformation and resilience. Through this approach, we seek to unlock opportunities for an adaptation economy. There's a Chinese proverb which says, a journey of 1,000 miles starts with the first step. This forum could be considered as our first step in creating and connecting ecosystem— ecosystems of players in the adaptation economy. The journey towards climate resilient industries will not be short. We are privileged today to be joined by the Deputy to the Director General and Managing Director of the Directorate of Technical Cooperation, Sustainable Industrial Development, and Industrial Development of Oneido, Whose leadership continues to advance inclusive and sustainable industrial development and to strengthen our collective efforts on climate action. Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming Mr. Siong Soong.

Thank you, thank you, Alois. Excellencies, distinguished delegates, ladies and gentlemen, it is an honor to welcome you to Vienna and to open the UNIDO Climate Adaptation and Industrial Resilience Forum 2026. I thank all government representatives, industry leaders, financial institutions, and partners for joining us at a moment of consequence for the global economy. It is a privilege to convene this forum at a time when climate adaptation has moved decisively from the margins of climate policy to the centre of economic and industrial decision-making. The past years have removed any remaining ambiguity. As already mentioned by Alois in his remarks, Climate impacts are not a future scenario. They are a systematic risk already materializing as economic disruptions to productivity, to infrastructure, to trade, and to jobs. Floods, droughts, heat stress, and extreme weather are already disrupting factories, industrial parks, supply chains, and livelihoods. The consequences are particularly severe for developing countries, least developed countries, and small island developing states, whose economies are often the most exposed and least buffered against climate-related shocks. This is not only a climate issue; it is an issue of equity and economic justice because. Those least responsible for climate change often bear the highest costs through lost livelihoods, lost markets, and lost development space. Yet the financing architecture has not kept pace with the risk reality. Adaptation needs are measured in the hundreds of billions annually, while available finance remains insufficient, fragmented, and too often inaccessible to those with the greatest urgency. Closing this gap is not optional; it is a condition for stability, for investment confidence, and for sustainable industrial development. Recent climate decisions have elevated adaptation from a protective agenda to an implementation agenda grounded in real economic systems— infrastructure, production, industrial zones, value chains, and employment. This shift matters profoundly for industry because it recognizes what countries and enterprises are already experiencing. Climate resilience is now a determining factor of competitiveness. Distinguished delegates, for UNIDO, this goes to the core of our mandate. Industrial development that is not climate resilient will not sustain, and climate adaptation that does not engage industry, such methods and markets will not reach scale. This Forum reflects our conviction that resilient industry is not a technical add-on; it is the foundation of development, competitiveness, and social stability. This Forum is therefore not a ceremonial moment; It is an implementation forum aligned with the UNIDO Climate Action Plan 2025 to 2029 and the key COP30 outcomes. This forum has 3 core objectives. Firstly, to serve as a global public-private convening platform that positions adaptation as a climate justice imperative. And an investable opportunity, and accelerating grant-based, concessional, and complementary private financing for scalable solutions— financing for solutions, in short. Secondly, to support countries and industries to co-create actionable and investable adaptation pathways at sector, value chains, and enterprise level. Very, very focused on implementation, that's why at the enterprise level, sector level. And thirdly, to strengthen UNIDO's role as a partner of choice for member states in advancing industrial adaptation. Over the next 2 days, we will move from shared diagnosis to practical pathways for action. We will focus on how adaptation can be operationalized for manufacturing industrial zones and the value chains through technology and innovation, through inclusive and locally led approaches, and through strengthened investment pathways. We will explore how public finance can be translated into credible delivery pipelines, how concessional financing like debt financing can unlock action in climate-vulnerable contexts, and how private sector capabilities can reinforce, not replace, public responsibility. We will also examine how climate intelligence can strengthen decision-making, reducing losses, and improving continuity across value chains. Additionally, we will also explore how nature-based solutions can be deployed as part of industrial resilience strategy that deliver economic value, protect ecosystems, and strengthen communities. Distinguished delegates, This year, UNIDO marks its 60th anniversary. As we look ahead, our role is clear: to act as a bridge between global commitments and country-level industrial transformation, to convene, to implement, and to deliver results on the ground. We will do so in close partnership with member states, development partners, multilateral funds, and industry, co-creating viable, investable, and resilient industrial pathways that protect livelihoods, safeguard development gains, and open new opportunities for sustainable industrial growth. As this year, according to Chinese culture, this is the Year of the Horse, Fair Horse, Now, with energy, with passion, I think we look forward to a very productive session ahead in this week. Thank you for your participation and we look forward to particularly practical outcomes of this Forum. Thank you.

Thank you, DDG. In this year of the horse on fire, we are moving on climate adaptation and industrial resilience. I'm honored to also welcome Madam Ambassador Valerie Rugene, the Deputy Permanent Representative of Kenya in Charge of Affairs Interim, to deliver a welcome statement. Your Excellency.

Thank you, Good morning.

First, let me welcome my brother from the Africa region, Your Excellency, Minister from Ghana, Mr. Alhaji Baba Seydou Issifu, Minister of State for Climate Change and Sustainability. DDG and also Ambassador Special Envoy and Ambassador-at-Large for Climate Affairs from the Republic of Timor-Leste. Excellencies, distinguished delegates, colleagues, ladies and gentlemen, I am honored to join you this morning for the high-level opening of the UNIDO Climate Adaptation and Industrial Resilience Forum under the timely theme, A Joint Call to Implement COP30 Adaptation Commitments for Climate Resilient Industry. Let me first convey warm greetings from the government of the Republic of Kenya and extend our sincere appreciation to UNIDO under the leadership of DDG Mr. Siong Zhu for convening this forum and for its steadfast partnership with developing countries, least developed countries, and small island developing countries. In this regard, Kenya would like to fully align with the sentiments of the DDG underscoring that for vulnerable nations, including least developed countries like many in Africa, climate adaptation is not a choice but a prerequisite for survival, for stability, and for sustainable industrial development. Excellencies, dear friends, this gathering takes place at a pivotal moment as we move from commitments made in Dubai toward implementation on the road to Belém and beyond. The UAE Framework for Global Climate Resilience, the evolving NDC 3.0 architecture, and the enhanced focus on national adaptation plans have created a clearer global vision. Our task here in Vienna is to translate that vision into action. For industries, for value chains, and for communities on the front lines of climate impacts. Dear friends, for Kenya, climate adaptation is not an abstract policy agenda. It is a daily imperative for our people, our enterprises, our infrastructure. The rising temperatures The recurrent droughts and floods and climate-induced disruptions to agriculture, manufacturing, and supply chain threaten hard-won development gains, particularly for MSMEs and workers whose livelihoods depend on resilient industrial ecosystems. Yet, yet these same challenges are driving innovation, spurring new business models, green technologies, and locally led solutions that can anchor more inclusive and resilient growth. We therefore welcome the focus of this forum on 3 interlocking pathways: innovation, inclusion, and investment. Innovation is needed to deploy climate-resilient technologies and circular economy approaches across industrial sectors. Inclusion is essential to ensure that adaptation efforts are locally led, gender-responsive, and youth-inclusive. Investment is a bridge that will turn ideas and pilots into scalable programs. Particularly through partnerships with multilateral climate funds and the private sector. When these 3 pathways reinforce one another, climate adaptation becomes an engine for sustainable industrialization rather than a constant strain on development. Kenya is therefore very proud to collaborate with UNIDO and partners on initiatives that exemplify this integrated approach. Programs such as the Adaptation Fund-supported Unlocking Investments in Gender and Youth-Inclusive Early Growth Stage Adaptation SMEs in Kenya and Uganda demonstrate how tailored finance, technical assistance, and ecosystem support can empower local enterprises to deliver context-specific adaptation solutions while creating decent jobs. These experiences show that when we invest in people, data, and enabling policies, climate-resilient industry becomes both feasible and bankable. I therefore congratulate all the 5 beneficiaries today, including the one from Kenya and Uganda. Excellencies, as we engage in the sessions over the next 2 days, from seeing, setting on the implications of COP28 to COP30 decisions to pathways on adaptation innovation, locally led adaptation and climate intelligence, and finally to the partner dialogue on financing. It is vital that we keep a few priorities in focus. First, we must close the gap between national adaptation priorities and concrete industrial projects by strengthening pipelines, project preparation, and risk-sharing instruments that can access global finance at scale. Second, we must elevate the voices and capabilities of local actors, including communities, SMEs, women, and youth, ensuring that their solutions are integrated into industrial policy and regional value chains. Third, we must invest in climate information and early warning systems so that enterprises and industrial zones can plan proactively rather than react to crises. Kenya stands ready to work with UNIDO, as always, with member states, multilateral funds, and the private sector to advance these priorities. We see this forum not only as a space for dialogue but as a launchpad for concrete partnerships and programs that will operationalize the COP30 adaptation commitments in ways that are ambitious, that are just, that are grounded in national realities. Let us seize this opportunity to align our industrial strategies with a resilient, with a low-emission future that really leaves no country and no community behind. In closing, I wish to once again thank UNIDO for its leadership and participating delegations, institutions, and stakeholders for their commitment. I look forward to fruitful discussions ahead and to continue working together to build climate-resilient industries that safeguard livelihoods, enhance competitiveness, and contribute to shared prosperity. I thank you.

Thank you, Excellency, and Asande Sana. I'm honored to invite His Excellency Honorable Mr. Elhaj Baba Seyedou Issifu, the Minister of Climate Change and Sustainability in the Republic of Ghana. Your Excellency.

Thank you.

Thank you very much. Today I'm dressed in a Ghanaian traditional attire. In Ghana, Wednesdays are declared for traditional upliftment, and we do that through wearing of the traditional fabric. The women wear this fabric and the men also wear it on Wednesday. That's what we have decided to do. And I'm sure some of you are aware that this is the fallout from, you know, a meeting our president had in Zambia. Um, without wasting much time, I bring you warm greetings from His Excellency John Dramane Mahama, the President of the Republic of Ghana, and the people of Ghana. Your Excellencies, distinguished ministers, ambassadors, distinguished delegates, Is widening, and industry is on the front line. In recognition of these climate challenges, Ghana aligns with UNIDO, with UNIDO's focus on turning Conference of Parties outcomes into actionable, scalable solutions for climate resilience industrial development. In Ghana, we are already living the consequences of changing climate. These are more frequent and severe shocks that disrupt communities, infrastructure, and livelihood. According to the Ghana Statistical Service, about 13 million people are are food insecure. For a country like Ghana, adaptation is not a side agenda. It is central to development, stability, and competitiveness. Increasingly, it is central to industrial policy. That is why Ghana has taken decisive institutional steps. In the year 2025, the government established the Office of the Minister of State in Charge of Climate Change and Sustainability under the presidency to provide national leadership, cross-ministerial coordination, and strategic direction on climate action and sustainable development. So I stand before you today as the first minister to lead this vision. We are also— we also recognize that national leadership must translate into delivery on the ground where risks are felt most. This is why we are advancing 2 key mechanisms as part of our mandate to improve climate governance architecture in Ghana. First, the establishment of the Climate Change and Sustainability Hub as a national center of excellence, bringing together evidence innovation, knowledge management, and investment matchmaking to strengthen Ghana's capacity to plan and, and implement adaptation at a scale. This center of excellence will drive climate action for policymakers, the academia, the private sector, and civil society organizations in Ghana and in the sub-region. And the establishment of climate change and sustainability units across municipal and district assembly is crucial. This is not just an administrative reform, but it is a deliberate whole-of-government and whole-of-nation approach to embed climate adaptation into planning, budgeting, standards, and day-to-day decision-making across the center of the country. This requires infrastructure that does not fail, logistics that do not collapse and value chains that can recover rapidly when hazards hit. This is precisely why climate adaptation for industrial resilience matters for Ghana's 24-hour economy initiative. Industry is not separate from society. It is the engine of livelihood. When production stops, incomes fall. When supply chain breaks, prices rise. When infrastructure fails, services collapse. Therefore, adaptation must protect not only households but also productive systems. In this context, our collaboration with UNIDO is highly impactful. UNIDO brings a unique combination: industrial development expertise, practical implementation capacity, and an ability to bridge technology finance, climate intelligence, and policy into real delivery. Your Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, the private sector remains critical to this vision. By embedding climate resilience into industrial strategies, we stand to unlock investment, create jobs, and build sustainable economies. In this regard, I am of the strongest opinion that UNIDO's work on eco-industrial parks in Ghana and resilient value chains is a model worthy of emulation. In conclusion, let us turn COP30 promises into climate-resilient industries, green jobs, and sustainable future. Ghana is committed to this agenda. With the right support, Africa can leapfrog to a low-carbon, climate-resilient economy, creating jobs, reducing poverty, and driving sustainable growth. Together, we can build an industrial future that is inclusive, resilient, and climate-smart. I thank you for your audience.

Thank you so much, Your Excellency. Climate adaptation is about development, stability, and competitiveness. Interesting way of capturing the essence. Thank you so much, Medasi. I have the privilege of inviting the last speaker of these welcome statements, Mr. Adao Soares Barbosa, Special Envoy at Large for Climate Affairs of the Democratic Republic of the Timor-Leste and chair of the LDC Group on Climate Change. Excellency, thank you.

Thank you very much, Excellencies. Especially, Your Excellency, Honorable Minister Essefu, Minister of State for Climate Change and Sustainability, Republic of Ghana. Distinguished ambassadors, Especially Ambassador Madam Valerie Wakunji Rungi, Deputy Permanent Representative of Kenya in charge of defence. Distinguished delegates, Ladies and gentlemen, very good morning to you all. I'm honored to speak on behalf of the Least Developed Countries, LDCs, at the opening of the inaugural UNIDO Climate Adaptation and Industrial Resilience Forum here in Vienna. For the LDCs, climate adaptation is essential for survival, stability, and development, as climate impacts are already undermining industrial growth, food systems, Infrastructure and deployment. Safeguarding development gains depends on keeping 1.5 degrees Celsius within reach, since every additional fraction of warming intensifies streams and loss and damage, and pushes communities closer to the limit of adaptation. That is loss and damage affected by the impact of climate change. The outcomes of COP30 reaffirmed a fundamental principle: adaptation is a matter of Climate justice. Countries that are contributing least to global emissions are facing the most severe impacts, while also holding the lowest fiscal space to respond for those negative. Climate change impact. Our special circumstances and leadership of LDCs have demonstrated for years in advancing adaptation on the ground must be fully recognized and remain central under the UNFCCC and the Paris Agreement. Even though the scale of business and industry in LDCs may limited. Resilience is not about marginal optimization. It is about protecting productive capacity, ensuring value chains, securing jobs, and preserving developing or development gains that are already under pressure from repeated climate shocks. This is why translating adaptation commitments into real economy action is so critical for all of us, but very much more focusing on the most vulnerable one, that is LDCs. National Adaptation Plan, NAPs, and also nationally determined contribution, NDCs, will only make a difference if supported by predictable grant-based financing and by implementation partners that understand the realities of development in climate-vulnerable Countries like LDCs. Let me take this opportunity to appreciate UNIDO as a trusted partner in this regard, within its mandate on inclusive and sustainable industrial development and its technical expertise in value chain resilience, climate smart technology development and industrial policies. UNIDO is also uniquely positioned to help LDCs operationalize adaptation on the ground that can help to transfer commitment into concrete industrial pathways that strengthen resilience and open new opportunities. This forum comes at an important moment as the world shifts from recognizing the scale of adaptation needs to identifying how they can be delivered at grassroots level. The focus on the innovation, inclusion, and investment reflects the priorities of the least developed countries, including but not limited to innovation that is accessible and appropriate for our industrial realities, locally led adaptation that strengthens communities and ensures that no one is left behind, and investment that addresses the adaptation finance gaps within continues to be widened. That's critically important for LDCs. We therefore look forward to concrete outcomes from this forum, clearer entry points for industrial adaptation, stronger partnership across governments and multilateral funds, and practical cooperation opportunities that respond directly to the needs of least developed countries. Most importantly, we look forward to advancing a shared vision of climate-resilient industrial development, one that recognizes our vulnerabilities as LDCs, but also our potential for growth and transformation, and position LDCs not only as highly vulnerable to the impact of climate change, but as leaders in advancing adaptation.

solutions.

With that, I would like to thank you.

Thank you, Excellency. I appreciate your honoring us with this event. Distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, I hand over to the overall MC of the event, Hilda. Hilda, over to you.

Many, many thanks, Mr. Mhlanga, and many thanks for the opening remarks from Your Excellencies. So once again, everyone, welcome to Vienna. I'd like to formally introduce myself. My name is Hilda Liswani, founder and CEO of WeBloom, a Swiss-based association which connects industry and policy leaders with media. It's such a pleasure to be here with you all as your official MC.

Thank you.

And I'm already super fired up by the Year of the Horse, so I hope you all are as well and you're ready to run with us today to really put some implementation behind a lot of the policy efforts that have been building up since COP28 all the way through to COP30. So hopefully today you join us all with UNIDO to really come together to put action to a lot of the statements that we've already heard. With this, we will now move into a very special moment of today's forum, an announcement session celebrating new initiatives advancing climate adaptation, innovation, and resilient industrial development. Across the next few minutes, we will highlight 3 newly endorsed initiatives with a combined value of $63.5 million in climate finance. To begin, may I kindly— actually, I see that Mr. Zhu is already here on stage, which is perfect. We will officially commence this moment to hand over the certificates to the distinguished guests and grantees. And the first announcement is the Program for Innovation in Climate Adaptation and Resilience Building Solutions, PARS, funded by the Global Environmental Facility for a total value of $48.5 million. Through this GEF-funded CARS program, UNIDO supports member states towards large-scale climate adaptation and resilience across Lesotho, Malawi, Somalia, Ethiopia, Madagascar, and Angola, reducing climate vulnerability by promoting innovation and deploying adaptation solutions through the private sector. So may I officially invite the representatives and receivers of these grants. First of all, the government representative of Malawi, Ms. Tawonga Mbaleluka, Director, Environmental Affairs Department, Ministry of Natural Resources and Climate Change, and GCF NDA Malawi. Please join us on stage, Ms. Mbaleluka. Thank you so much. May I also call to the stage government representative from Madagascar, Mr. Harry Andriamirado, technical collaborator of the Climate Change Department, Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development, and GEF operational focus point for Madagascar. May I also invite to the stage government representative of Angola, Mr. Malakwais Joaquim Moraes Tenente, Advisor of the Minister of Environment— Ministry of Environment and GEF Operation Focal Point for Angola. May I also invite government representative of Ethiopia, Mr. Tamirat Teshome, Head of Bamboo Development and Technology Expansion Desk, Ethiopian forestry development.

We need to get the ambassadors off the stage first. Yes, please let the 3 speakers come down. Can you thank them again?

Thank you again to the speakers. Finally, can I welcome the Global Environmental Facility representative, Mr. Jason Spencely, Senior Climate Change Specialist, Global Environmental Facility. Please give our guests a warm round of applause. So I will send it. Fantastic. Congratulations to the government representatives and to GEF. Now swiftly moving on, again in the spirit of horses on fire, the next award goes out to to Asif. Our second announcement, or rather, yes, our second announcement is the Adaptation SMEs Innovation Facility funded by the Adaptation Fund as part of the Adaptation Fund Climate Innovation Accelerator Partnership. UNIDO joins as an AFCIA partner. Partner with this $10 million project. ACIF positions local enterprises as frontline solution providers for climate adaptation, strengthening innovation ecosystems, and enabling adaptation-focused SMEs to develop, deliver, and scale solutions that respond to community-driven climate needs. May I please invite the GFA Global Representative, Mr. Prateek Srivastava, Managing Director, Bankable Frontier Associates, and also the Adaptation Fund Representative, Mr. Andrew Hollander, Climate Change Analyst, Programming and Innovation Unit at the Adaptation Fund. So, on to our last photo session and last recipients. Our last announcement is for the project titled Unlocking Investments in Gender and Youth-Inclusive Early Growth Stage Adaptation SMEs in Kenya and Uganda, KUAA, funded again by the Adaptation Fund under its Large Innovation Grant window for a total value of $5 million. This is the first project to be approved under the Large large innovation fund window of the Adaptation Fund in Africa. The KUAA initiative unlocks investment for early-stage adaptation enterprises, strengthening gender and youth inclusion while accelerating locally led climate innovation. Without further ado, please welcome Madame Ambassador once again, Ms. Valerie Deputy Permanent Representative of Kenya, and Charles Dafeya. And please also welcome the Adelphi representative, Mr. Mirko Durke, Head of Program Green Entrepreneurship at Adelphi. Please also welcome Finding XY representative, Mr. Edirisa Sembatya, Chief Executive Officer Officer at the Finding XY Group Kenya. Please also welcome the Climate Ventures representative, Mr. Victor Ndiyege, Chief Executive Officer, Kenya Climate Ventures. And finally, the Adaptation Fund representative, Mr. Andrew Hollander, Climate Change Analyst, Programming and Innovation Unit at the Adaptation Fund. Once again, thank you, Andrew. Congratulations to the recipients and a warm, heartfelt thank you to the funders and financiers. Moving on to our next section of the program of the forum, I hope you're all still with me, focused, ready to run, ready to implement some actionable and impactful solutions. Our first session is really going in this direction. We will be joined by distinguished speakers to set the scene, to really understand where we are at right now, from Dubai to Belém, what COP28 to COP30 means for climate adaptation, and a resilient industry. Through this discussion, we will hear from moderator Mr. Nabooru Zuma and speakers Ms. Donna Lagdameo and Mr. Mhlanga once again and Ms. Kristin Dunlop. I warmly welcome the speakers to the stage to kick us off with the first session and get us ready to run like horses. Thank you.

Okay, very good morning to everyone and welcome to this session on session 1, the scene setting. From Dubai to Berlin: What COP28 to COP30— what this means for climate adaptation and resilience industries. We're actually covering Dubai to Berlin just in this one short session, but thankfully we're without the emissions of actually flying it, so that is good news. My name is Noboru Zama. I'm from UNIDO, and it is a pleasure to moderate this first session of the forum. This opening panel, as briefly introduced by the MC, we try to unpack the COP, especially COP28, COP30, the decisions related to adaptation, what that means on industrial resilience. So we have all these great experts here as speakers, and I would like to introduce all 3 speakers before we start this session. So the first speaker is from the UNFCCC Secretariat, Ms. Donna Lagdameo. She's the manager of the Adaptation Division from the UNFCCC Secretariat. Welcome, Donna.

Thank you.

The second speaker is from UNIDO, representative from UNIDO, Mr. Alois Mulanga, the Director of Climate Innovation and Montreal Protocol Division here at UNIDO.

Thank you.

And third speaker is the representative from the innovation ecosystem, Ms. Kirsten Dunlop, the Chief Executive Officer of EIT ClimateKick. So thank you very much for being with us today. Now, just to start with, I would like to invite Donna for her opening remarks. Donna, the floor is yours.

Thank you.

Hello, everyone. Good morning. Good morning, Excellencies, colleagues, ladies and gentlemen. It's really a privilege and a pleasure to join you this morning. I really would like to recall recall some of the statements of the earlier speakers on what adaptation is not. We've heard that adaptation is not an abstract agenda. It is not a technical discussion, and it is not a side issue. This, ladies and gentlemen, is the reality of the world today. What we've seen, not just over the past 2 COPs, but really over the past 3 decades, adaptation has really moved from the sidelines to the center. And this is becoming a defining test on how we think, how we innovate, and how we value people who actually drive adaptation forward. Ladies and gentlemen, we are witnessing not just a change in mindset, we are witnessing a cultural mindset— cultural change, rather. We are moving from just understanding adaptation as the reduction of vulnerability to how, through adaptation, we are shaping our future ahead of us. It is now the time for us to think differently, to think collectively, and to think not just for adapting today, but really adapting to the long term. So, ladies and gentlemen, this This change in mindset, this change in cultural approach, is really defining how we innovate. I would like to highlight some points. Innovation is really how we change our ways of working, ways of working in terms of really imbibing locally-led adaptation. Change our ways of working, we don't just tick the box when we say, oh, we consulted communities, oh, we actually heard from them. We need to bring them up from the start to the finish. And this is the meaningful engagement of how we do adaptation and adaptation actions. Engaging diverse knowledge systems is one of the things that we are really seeing right now. Last week, there was an IPCC meeting on engaging diverse knowledge systems in the way we assess science. And this, ladies and gentlemen, is crucial. And I was really inspired by the traditional message that we got from our Excellency from Ghana. Ladies and gentlemen, we are now— should not just think of tradition as a one-day-a-week kind of thing. Tradition and Indigenous values and worldview should be the starting point on how we shape adaptation practices in And seeing how the local knowledge holders, how local communities are part of the process, is something that we should really use as a center point of our inclusive approaches. And this paradigm shift also challenges how we think about investments. The real question is not how much money is mobilized.

Yes.

But what we do with the money and what we do, what the actions we do, so we actually adapt today and for generations to come. Colleagues, let us move from control to collaboration. Let us move from just looking at nature and ecosystems as a resource, but really as the center of our actions. Let us move from short-term optimization to long-term resilience. This cultural shift puts UNIDO at the center of the transformation. UNIDO can foster the innovation of ecosystems through inclusive by design, by supporting solutions that are locally grounded and globally relevant, and really help us translate the frameworks into action. Colleagues, the frameworks from the COP sessions will not deliver transformation. It's how we apply these frameworks into our work, into our thinking. Transformation begins when we choose to think differently, when we choose to listen differently, and when we invest differently. So the real question is not whether adaptation is possible. It is whether we are ready to change our mindset, to place people, knowledge systems, and resilience at the heart of innovation. Colleagues, the opportunity is before us, and that is the responsibility this forum invites us to embrace. Let us look at adaptation as something that will shape our future and our future generations. Thank you so much.

Thank you very much, Donam. I think that was a very strong message and very— it was a great overview framework to start this discussion. I personally was in the negotiations back 10 years back in the adaptation negotiations, negotiating for Article 7, including the Global Goal on Adaptation. It's very exciting, and I'm very happy to see all the developments. Now let's move on to Alois, if we may. It's a very similar topic, but how do you see this paradigm shift happening? what we just discussed, and what would this mean, especially on UNIDO-specific adaptation portfolios?

Thank you, Zama-san, and good morning. Still morning. In my view, we are at a very pivotal moment with regards to how do we perceive climate adaptation from an industry development perspective. I'm a firm believer in systems transformation. We have the opportunity to transform industry in a systematic way by integrating adaptation and resilience across all our services and all our support to industrial development. It is important to look at how do we Provide the support in all the policy support that we provide to industries, to governments, all the support on finance. How do we integrate adaptation and resilience into this technology? We need to focus on technology that brings about resilience and adaptation benefits. Workforce systems— what kind of skills do we need in this adaptation economy? Of course, there's issue of financing. There's a place for grants and how we can fine-tune or use these grants to unlock the role of private sector at scale so that industry has confidence to invest in adaptation. Climate adaptation always requires high upfront costs. It's also about policy coordination. The private sector can only move in when the public sector is— the public has already invested in some basic infrastructure. You need to have coastal erosion dealt with before the real estate developers can come in. So it's an opportune moment to systematically integrate adaptation and resilience across all levers of change. There's also issue of climate data and information. We have an issue around climate data and information. On one side, governments through the early warning systems are providing data to the community, to industry, but industry is saying, I need data, I need to be able to quantify the risks that I have now and in the near future for me to be able to invest. In my view, the whole of UNIDO's portfolio faces an opportune moment to be transformational and to be systematic on how do we integrate climate adaptation and resilience principles across all our services. To me, we need to have a systems approach and focus on all our services so that we help communities to be resilient to climate change, we help industries to actually start protecting themselves, but also protecting the communities that they serve, because it's about protecting the jobs of those people who actually work in these industries. It's about protecting and stability of economies, of societies around these industries. So at this point in time, it is an opportune moment to systematically integrate adaptation resilience across all our services so that we can achieve the transformational change at scale and pace that is commensurate to the challenge. Thank you.

Thank you, Aloïs. I think that was a very strong message. Again, transformational systems approach incorporating in all sectors, I think, is a very important keyword. Thank you. Now, moving on to Kristin, a very similar topic, but if you could please elaborate a bit more from the systems-level issues and approaches. How do you see this paradigm shift in that area?

So maybe let me build immediately on this notion of integration, and as Donna said, a transformation of our ways of working, and I would add, as I'm sure you intend as well, the ways of living, and literally our entire ways of thinking, and I would very much welcome what I heard— Ghana integrating across the entire national policy system ways of thinking about adaptation and resilience as a core element of economic stability, competitiveness, and security. This is key. Maybe I can give an example, and we see it a lot as an organization working— very, very proud to partner with UNIDO to work in the implementation support of individual entrepreneurs, of entrepreneurial ecosystems, and support organizations. Integration means, for example, bringing together adaptation, mitigation, and circular economy. These are all parts of questions around access to resources, ways of thinking about livelihoods, and above all, addressing poverty and inequality as a core principle. If I give an example, perhaps, of Let me name an organization, a scale-up now operating in Mexico, which its name is Grivium. It is focused on crickets for flour, and it's actually very interesting in terms of its resiliency because its percentage of amino acids and of protein is significantly higher than traditional food in this context. It has a very, very successful business model that has been incubated within the logic of thinking about sustainability and circularity, but it has now had an overlay on introducing adaptation and resilience questions that have gone to look at a lot of the underlying assumptions about how a business model would be developed in our current paradigm of economic thinking, which assumes centralized production, maximizing profit, and all of the controls in which we think. But if you apply, then, a resilience and adaptation assessment, as we have been doing, of course, none of that works, because it assumes a stability of supply, it assumes stable climatic conditions, it assumes stable markets. So the whole organization has now been recoded for distributed production, decentralized participation with farmers over a much wider area, and the active participation and co-design with partners in the entire value chain and production design. And this is a kind of practical example of how you are then thinking about not just resilience at one point, but resilience of the entire system, the underlying issues around food and health and food systems and water system security, the sustainability of production, the resilience of a business that is addressing mitigation, sustainability, and circularity, and its capacity to produce an adaptive business model that can then create a whole sustained effect of distributed resilience to all those involved, and of course, the capability building that means everybody's able to see that. So we can make this very practical, but it comes down to understanding that adaptation is not just protection, It is indeed, as the first panel said, all about competitiveness, about social justice, about security, and it is an economic strategy and an investment strategy, because that business is way more investable than it was a year ago.

Thank you, Kristin. I think there's a lot of opportunities in this area of adaptation. I think that was a very strong case. takeaway from your message. Thank you. Now, I would like to move on to the next half of this session, which I would like to deep dive a bit more into the 3 different pathways of this forum, which is innovation, inclusion, and also investment. So the first question would be to Aloïs. It is going to be on innovation. So UNIDO is increasingly positioning climate adaptation as an industrial competitiveness agenda. And what innovation pathways— you've referred to some digital climate intelligence already, but this is an example— or resilience value chain designs, or nature-based industrial solutions. What do you see as most viable for rapid uptake? stake in industry following the guidance emerging from the COP30 or the COP, you know, UNFCCC process?

Thank you, Samasson. It is also important for us to note that this is our first Climate Adaptation and Resilience Forum, so in a way, we are the greatest startup in this space. If a startup is already confirming over $60 million in grants to programs and projects, it is a startup that is in the right direction, in my view. So the whole issue of streamlining or mainstreaming adaptation in INIDO will be a phased process. First of all, there are already areas that we are working on which are We can focus on this innovation and entrepreneurship support to support as many entrepreneurs to start harnessing the opportunities in the adaptation economy, to develop products and services and solutions that brings about adaptation and resilience benefits to communities that never come to the capital city. But the entrepreneurial spirit is such that entrepreneurs, wherever they see an opportunity, they will reach there. Nature-based solutions— industry is to a large extent reliant on nature, and this can be linked to our work on industrial parks. His Excellency mentioned industrial parks. We have some pilot and interesting projects on nature-based solutions and industrial parks. This is, I think, in my view, an opportunity for us to grow in this space. The whole industrial parks approach is an opportunity for us to link suppliers, manufacturers, logistics, and the markets, so we can actually look at adaptation and resilience across all these industrial parks that we're working on. UNIDO is active in agribusiness development. We are working with farmers, we are working with, uh, I mean, agro-processing facilities in Gambia, in Ethiopia, in many countries. That is a nugget that we should exploit in terms of how do we systematically integrate adaptation and resilience services across these value chains and across these agro-industrial parks. Then I think an opportunity for us is also about sustainable cooling. Sustainable cooling is normally deemed as a mitigation opportunity or a new mitigation technology. I traveled to one country when I was still young, and we were traveling, I think, 400 kilometers to some secluded village or community. In the morning, I met women who were selling their mangoes at $10 per kg. Right? In the evening, they were selling those mangoes at $2 per kg. Why? There's no sustainable cooling facilities, and it is a fundamental drag from an investment perspective. It is also losing livelihoods. So sustainable cooling, in my view, is a very important opportunity for us as UNIDO to develop sustainable cooling as a climate adaptation response. Then this whole area of climate intelligence, ecosystem and early warning— I mean, climate intelligence, ecosystems and early warning systems, there's a lot of— there's actually a mismatch between those who want data, saying that we are inundated with data that we cannot interpret. Those who provide data say, we are providing you with data. And a lot of early warning systems in our partner countries Are not viable. Why are they not viable? It's simply because they don't register in the economic metrics. It they just remain as climate data. There is an opportunity to transform this climate data into intelligence, intelligence that will inform someone who is producing tomatoes when is the most appropriate harvest time. How do I plan my? Planting and my access to the market so that I am resilient while I'm adapting to the changing climate. So this whole issue of climate information and early warning systems, we need to transform it from just the public's good to make it an economic good that governments can have the intelligence to integrate into their decision-making process. When a minister is planning agricultural development, To what extent is climate intelligence integrated into this? When they're talking about industrial development, what informs the climate risk assessment? Are they able to quantify the risk if I'm investing in roads? Some of the roads we see, they are built today, after 2 or 3 years they're washed away. That's a huge investment that is actually missing the climate resilience, or I mean climate intelligence information. So these are, in my view, these are sort of immediate opportunities that we as UNIDO can exploit, can support our member states, and as we grow, we have, I mean, different set of services. Thank you.

Great, thank you for the concrete examples. Thank you. Again, another question on innovation, this one to Kristin, please. From your experience, how can innovation agencies and industrial actors jointly design innovation missions that can operationalize these COP30 outcomes and scaling adaptation solutions across regions while preserving local ownership and relevance.

That's actually one of the really interesting, critical things, because this relationship between extremely contextually relevant, responsive localised actions, and then the opportunities of working within larger frameworks, where there is also an interest of capital to aggregate and work at scale, because of economies of scale and because of the opportunities of the benefits of that, which is why it matters so much at national scale for policies to be integrated. What we have learned as an organisation working in 70 countries, bridging different parts of the world— first of all, this notion of a mission of actually creating— I mean, we work with this in a European context because the European Commission decided to copy John F. Kennedy's idea of a moonshot and turn it into Earthshots, where we create kind of sustainable hopes and dreams for a transformative world. But it's rather— it's proven to be rather useful, and we are finding, for example, in particular, we work with a program within the logic of a mission called Pathways to Resilience, which we are now taking a lot of the learnings from that specifically into Sierra Leone and Madagascar. And actually, I was seeing here before a colleague, Peter, from the SME Development Association in Sierra Leone, because this is one of the areas where we're really working to bring a lot of these principles through. And I would describe it as a combination of systematic and loose, i.e., you create a framework which is very much about a set of principles that we know are needed that speak to exactly what you have been describing, Eloise, a need to think, to bring actors together, to understand and begin to hear and see one another so that we can align an understanding of the relationship between risk and exposures and what it is that people don't yet quite realize is coming in the worsening of heat or water stress with those who are— whose whose livelihoods will be at risk and be affected indirectly, so that they begin to make that connection more directly, with those who are developing solutions and very often don't realize that those are actually adaptation solutions, and could therefore benefit not only from the mitigation questions of sustainable development, economic development, but also benefit from the fact that they will then tap into adaptation. And so if I take, for example, actually Sierra Leone, since we are here, beginning to look at how to build the ecosystem of actors, the entrepreneurial ecosystem. The metaphor we often use is building a fertile soil for multiple actors to work together, to help each other, to learn from one another in these kind of pathways to resilience, regional resilience journeys. The number one benefit is the acceleration of peer learning, but that's also cross-regional. So, for example, I was thinking I think, exactly what you were saying in sustainable cooling, one of the things that we were discussing this morning is there is an example in Nigeria now called CoolBox, which has really been successful in small modular cooling units that can be brought into the Sierra Leone context and can begin to improve the situation where women smallholding farmers are losing so much of their cultivation and so much of their goods because they simply can't deal with the heat and the rising heat stress. So integrating these kinds of systems where you create an overarching architecture for resilience and for a long-term sustained resilience journey that taps into national development plans, national adaptation plans, development commitments, it really starts to create a frame that is like an investment prospectus, and at the same time, you connect very, very hyperlocal efforts into one another, to begin to reframe and see those opportunities as, indeed, a combination of both sustainable development and resilience and adaptation solutions, and think then, you know, for example, around work that we are doing in Tanzania, where, indeed, we have, for example, one of the most leading-edge solutions has come from a Tanzanian entrepreneur bringing in climate-smart data, artificial intelligence, Earth satellite observation on precision agriculture, soil health monitoring, precise changes in when and where to think about irrigation, and we have a fantastic example of a farmer who has really reached out spontaneously to him and whose production has gone from average year losses constantly to almost no loss at all. And this kind of storying helps us combine these global architecture, and we're now organizing an investor field trip into that place to bring in investors right across to see this ecosystem effect. So this notion of creating missions is about creating a space for both top-level policy goals and the integration there to meet multiple actors and multiple— an ecosystem of effects of multiple solutions working together to kind of find each other and meet in the middle, and that's where the space becomes more and more investable, and indeed we start talking about resilience by design.

Okay, good.

Thank you, Kirsten. Just concerning the time, I would like to move on to the next topic, which is inclusion. This is for you, Donna. The UNFCCC has been advancing locally led adaptation principles, and COP30 has elevated them further. Given the complexity of the industrial systems, what practical mechanisms mechanisms could help ensure that industrial actors would be able to align their adaptation actions with local participation, equity, and just transition principles?

Yes, thank you. Thank you, my dear. So I have 3 signals that I would like to share with you all. One is what we're seeing right now in COP decision text is really the and inclusion of language that was not there before. We're now seeing language that's anchored on Indigenous values and worldviews. We're seeing language and we're seeing decision texts that emphasize holistic approaches. And my dears, so that's the first one. So when we do our businesses, our business plans, planning, anchoring it on holistic approaches that really combine adaptation and mitigation, not making them separate, is one thing that you may want to apply in the way forward. Second is the inclusion of diverse knowledge systems. There's really a strong recognition that it's not just a monopoly of knowledge that's coming from one sector or from one group. The importance of and the value addition of knowledge systems from different groups, from different traditions, different ethnic groups, different knowledge systems is something that you may want to bring into the design and in the implementation of industry, of businesses. Third is the application of a policy signal that we're seeing as well that is very forward-looking. Just last year, we saw specific language that is anchored on forward-looking approaches that really help us frame the adaptation for future generations, not just for this generation. So, that longevity of planning and industry initiatives is something that you— is a policy signal that we are seeing from from COP sessions. Last is that accountability through reporting. One of the things that we're seeing right now in country reports is that they're, yes, we did this, yes, we did that, but maybe we should look into how things are being done, how things, how countries and how industries are bringing different ideas together, how countries and industries are being different value systems together. And because this is very important, this is key to transformation. Otherwise, we will just be talking blah, blah. We need to anchor it on something different and something that's not in the box and something that's not a copy-paste of what we've been doing for generations. These are the policy signals that we are seeing that can drive innovation and adaptation in the long run.

Thanks.

Kristin, if you would like to add.

I was just going to add, actually, very concretely, from the program we are working with UNIDO on right now, which is the CALE program, that is really looking at how do we get investment into this space. And one of the biggest problems is a lack of understanding of the relationship between mitigation and adaptation, and a lack of understanding that investing in adaptation is actually investing in core economic stability, which buys us more time. So a lot of our learnings are principally, you need the integrated data, you need to ensure that there is a policy environment that is looking and putting clear directional signal behind it. We noticed 2 things. There continues to be an assumption that someone knows better what needs to be done on the ground, as opposed to bringing those who are closest to the problem in very early, from the very beginning and all the way along. And the second thing is to really start to introduce, in the development context, the notion of value at risk. We have a set of economic assumptions that assume a normal which is based on the last 50 years. We are not facing that world, and it is time to bring the cost of total destruction Economize it, price it, and that suddenly creates an investment case for really putting time in, grants and loans and investment capital into those kind of stabilization mechanisms on which everything else can grow.

Okay, thank you. Let's move on to the final pathway, which is the investment. This is for you, Alois, if you could please elaborate maybe in 1 or 2 minutes. Following COP30's emphasis on adaptation finance, what financial instruments or partnership models do you see as most promising for mobilizing large-scale investments into climate-resilient industrial upgrading in developing countries?

Thank you, Nobuo. I think a few things. It is a given that in this space we'll continue to need public finance instruments, public finance from international financing organizations, but also budgetary allocations and climate funds from— I mean, from the national government to create a basis for the private sector to move in at scale. We also have blended financing instruments Blended financing instruments that don't distort the market, that don't— that do not eliminate the private sector or disincentivize the private sector to move in quickly. We also need insurance and risk transfer tools. In my private life, I'm a farmer, and one day I was buying seed for maize. I went to a shop. There were different varieties. There was one variety costing, let's say, $100 and another variety costing $120. After buying the one for $100, I then asked, what is so different? And the saleslady told me, oh, this one for $120, if you buy it, if your crop fails, You come and get a new bag. That is insurance at a very local level. We need a lot of this type of insurances to be available so that the private sector and people can already invest in adaptation. Of course, the different aspects of nature-based funding and permutations, but of course, I think ultimately adaptation financing does not. I mean, does not. Floor, not just due to lack of capital availability. We also need a pipeline of solid investable projects. The work that we are doing, working with banks to be able to quantify adaptation risk, is important. Measurement challenges, the resilience matrix that we are also working on. If you are seeing 100 beneficiaries, is someone across the table also seeing 100 beneficiaries or is he seeing 5? Then risk premiums and ultimately limited monetized cash flows. So we need the whole stack of financing from grants, early-stage investors— I mean, moving into companies that have a viable product— concessional capital, And of course, commercial capital. I want to sort of look at especially the work that we are doing with SMEs. Adaptation SMEs are completely different from mitigation SMEs. There's tension between scalability and remaining consistent to adaptation ethos. If you are doing drip irrigation, you need to design a drip irrigation system for a specific community. And this is not the same with solar home systems. So what kind of financing do adaptation SMEs, adaptation entrepreneurs, need for them to be able to go to scale, given their business operations and given the limited capacity to go to scale? So in the finance realm, there are some of the issues that I think we need to put in place and we need to see how this Belém Declaration helps us to achieve those opportunities. Thank you.

Thank you very much. We really enjoyed your examples especially. Thank you very much for providing. There's much more to discuss, but unfortunately, I think the time is over. I would like to thank all the speakers, the 3 speakers of this session, for this rich discussion. What we heard today is, I think, It's very clear. So from Dubai to Berlin, the path forward for climate-resilient industry will depend on our ability to innovate systematically, include the voices and capacities of the local communities, and also mobilize investment at scale. And the insights shared today, from policy to practice, show that adaptation is not an option, is not anymore an option. But we need to include this, or adaptation, in everything, which means, in other words, adaptation is an industrial opportunity. I think there's a huge opportunity in this area of industries or industrial resilience. And as we move forward beyond COP30, let us translate these ideas and mindsets into action. through stronger partnerships, more integrated approaches, and a shared commitment to building industries that are fully future-ready, equitable, and resilient. So I would like to once again— please join me once again in giving a big applause to the 3 speakers of this session today. Thank you.

Thank you.

Very, very insightful indeed. Thank you so much to the distinguished speakers. So we learned from this session what adaptation is not, and that adaptation is moving more and more to the center. So what are we going to do with this momentum as we see adaptation is pulling up steam? We also heard from the session that it's not as easy as allocating money and mobilizing funds we also have to understand what to do with these funds, where to put them, which means changing the way we think about resilience, changing the way we think about adaptation, which is typically one of the most challenging hurdles. How do we change the way we think? And something that really stayed with me in particular that I am going to be asking myself is, how do we price the cost of total destruction into investment? This is something that I believe has potential to unlock more value for climate adaptation and resilience. So, as we move on to the next session, I want to recognize as well who's in the room. In the room today, we have policymakers, we have innovators, we have industry leaders, we have financiers. And so, for the next session, I and UNIDO and this forum want to hear from all of you. So as we move on to the next session, Climate Adaptation and Industrial Resilience Post-COP, piggybacking off of the first session, which really set the scene of what was learned, what was achieved from previous COPs, moving forward to understanding how do we bring various sectors together to really optimize collaboration? What is the complementary aspects between bringing together industry innovators, policymakers? After the session, there will be a Q&A, and this is where we want to hear from you. And to get involved in the discussion, all you have to do is— you all have microphones in front of you on your desks, and if you want to ask a question or contribute to the discussions during the Q&A, simply press the MC button in front of your mics, and we'd really, really love to hear from you. So without further ado, it is my pleasure to welcome on stage the moderator of the session, Ms. Eleonora Gatti, the speakers, Mr. Harry Rakotondravanyi, Ms. Sanchez, Ms. Christiane Brunner, Mr. John Spencely, and Ms. Saliha Dobradic, who is joining us online. Please give our speakers a round of applause.

Thank you.

Before we begin, may I ask, do we have Saliha online? All right. So welcome to session 2, Climate Adaptation and Industrial Resilience Post-COP Innovation, Inclusion, and Investment. I'm honored today to have a very esteemed panel with me. So we have Dr. Harry, he's the GEF Operational Focal Point from the Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development in Madagascar. Welcome. We have Ms. Marioldy Sanchez, Deputy Program Director, Alliance for Indigenous Forests in the Peruvian Amazon. in Peru. Welcome. We have Ms. Christiane Brunner, board member, CEOs for Future, and founder of Business Circle. Welcome, Ms. Christiane. We have Mr. Jason Spensley, senior climate change specialist at the Global Environment Facility. And we have— we will have very soon online—

Recording in progress.

We'll have very soon online Ms. Saliha Dobardic, who is the lead of the Programming and Innovation Unit at the Adaptation Fund. So this session really brings together the Forum's 3 core themes of innovation, inclusion, and investment. You have seen in all the Forum posters that our 3 themes for this year are inclusion, innovation, and investment. And as you've heard in the panels before, over the last 2 COPs and most recently in Belém, adaptation has rightly moved to the center of the global climate agenda. Belém has reinforced the implementation expectations that NDCs 3.0 and national adaptation plans must translate into real economy action supported by stronger adaptation finance signals. But myself, like many of you here in the room, are grappling with a really hard question, which is what does it take to translate the global discourse, the financing signals, and the national plans into implementation for enterprise, industrial zone, MSMEs, value chains, which are all operating under real climate stress whilst delivering prosperity and resilience for communities on the ground. This is really where innovation, inclusion, and investments stop being teams and start becoming enablers. So first, I would like to hear from 2 country perspectives, from Madagascar and from Peru. So let me turn first to Dr. Harry, and let me ask you, so COP13 in Belém reinforced a human-centered approach to adaptation and set expectations for translating NDCs 3.0 and national adaptation plan into real economy action. So from Madagascar's experience and perspective, what does that translation require in practice for enterprises, for communities, and for supply chains in your country? Many thanks.

Thank you very much, Eleonora. Very good morning for us. To begin this, my intervention, please let me allow you to explain that Madagascar is just hit by 2 back-to-back cyclones during the last months. More than 100 people have been killed, and the biggest— one of the biggest cities in the eastern part of the country is damaged at 95%. And we are kind of living like nightmares during these events. In the southern part of the country, actually, currently there is an event of drought, very serious drought, and more than 2 million people are starving in the country. Having said that, for Madagascar, translating NDC and the NAP into The really key action for enterprises and local community and value chain is not about creating a new document. It's about for enterprises to understand and manage the risks into their business. It's about investing in resilient infrastructure, in water, in energy, in storage, and in logistics in high-risk areas, and to diversify the sourcing and building relationships with local suppliers, especially rural SMEs, to reduce value chain disruptions. Secondly, it's a kind of— it's an aspect of resource mobilization.

Why?

Because Madagascar is, despite that it's an LDC and that benefits the recurrent support from the GEF, we don't have the capacity to mobilize finance. But anyway, we get support from IMF, from the World Bank, from all other partners, including UNIDO, that support us to mobilize finance. Back in 2024, we have launched what we call the Climate Finance Resource Mobilization that started getting to scale up and to coordinate climate finance. Madagascar is also mobilizing new instruments, including, for example, sustainable bonds and climate shock insurance. That means that the country is trying to align the policies and financial instruments to its NDC and NAPs in order to strengthen its capacity, its ability to face climate hazards. So, for enterprise perspective, it's all about impact strategy actions. And now, for local communities, the difference is that the strategy we're trying to adopt this inclusiveness. That means that in the country, in a country where the majority of the people depend on agriculture and fisheries, adaptation is first and foremost territorial and community-driven. Key priorities such as early warning systems, water management, Coastal protection and watershed protection and restoration, crop diversification are— we know that, we understand the importance of that, but— and in addition, our adaptation framework is trying to emphasize these measures into national and regional and municipal municipal development plans. We understand that co-benefits is more delivered when the cases including co-design and co-creation of policies, measures, and local actions. So this strategy on inclusiveness is We're trying to scale up this from support from diverse partners, including this one of the projects supported by UNIDO, which is the PARTS program and other programs. For value chains, we are trying to adapt. It's about reshaping and transforming. Kind of innovation on what is already existing, because recent climate analysis shows that even current areas that is suitable for crop productions, they'll become much less suitable over the coming decades without adaptation. And as I said to you, The adaptation measures are already existing and accessible, but we lack financial supports and transformation on the ground. But, for example, there's an example of an existing initiative that needs to be scaled up, and it's really an innovation. Investment on the ground, which is supported by the government of Germany, which is called Preda. There is— the approach is like develop local and try to assess the climate risk on the ground and develop local adaptation. And protecting the production systems from the existing climate risks, stabilizing the supplies from small processing units to keep operating after extreme events. And this combined with parametric insurance and advisory services so that farmers and processors continue to receive rapid payouts and guidance instead of falling in debt and in bankruptcy after each shock. So in one term, in short term, first, one of the key for us to translate NDC and NAP into real economy action is to integrate climate risk into business investment decisions, where to plant factories, where to put ports, where to localize industrial parks. Second, finance locally led solutions in the most exposed areas. And third, to reshape and to innovate the existing value chains. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Dr. Harry, for your remarks. Next, let's turn to Ms. Sanchez, so we'll travel to Peru. Climate change, as we know very well, is already damaging ecosystems. Food systems and supply chains, and vulnerable communities are disproportionately affected as unsustainable local economies erode livelihoods and deepen poverty. From a Latin American Caribbean perspective, from the ground, what are the most urgent resilient priorities across value chains and bioeconomy relevant production systems that you can bring to the fore? Thank you.

Thank you, Eleonora. Good afternoon, everyone. I am pleased to be here. From Latin America, definitely the value chains highly rely on natural capital, so I would say that the most urgent priorities are first to increase investment in nature-based solutions and the inclusion, the effective inclusion of those who are living in the front lines of climate change and ecosystem degradation. So we believe that there are 3 key elements that must be supported to translate this into action. The first one would be strong, equitable, and long-term partnerships between public-private sector, the communities whose livelihoods depend depends on the ecosystems, the organizations that are providing technical assistance on the ground for the co-creation, together co-create the biobusiness models that are capable to address risks and also to ensure enabling conditions. That will be the first one. The second, the access to patient and culture-sensitive finance. To allow communities to adapt technologies, also to strengthen the governance, which is very relevant, and to build capacities based on both traditional and new knowledge. And the third one would be to expand the global markets for bioproducts to provide stability to communities and to investors in these bioeconomy models. Let me share with you a specific example from the Peruvian Amazon that is engaging 28 indigenous communities in my country, Peru. Well, these— for years, these communities have participated in forest and agricultural value chains, but without capturing sufficient value while facing the increase of threats threats in their livelihoods. But they made a partnership with AIDER, which is a civil society organization, and they implemented an integrated land management model that combines productive activities, forest protection, also traceability monitoring, and early warning system for deforestation. So, well, from this experience, they have improved the production activities, but also they have improved the organization under a bio-business approach. So they decided to create a small enterprise. This enterprise name is Niviri, and this company is currently supporting the access to new markets, to companies and clients that are willing to pay a fair price for the products. And also, this company is giving added value to these timber, non-timber forest products, also handicrafts, including the FSC certification. And these communities also have progressed to implement a REDD+ initiative for voluntary carbon markets. So they are also accessing climate finance from private sector while also collaborating with governmental organizations to develop or ensure enabling conditions such as land tenure security, which is crucial for the sustainability of the economic activities and the bioeconomy system. I would say what today these communities are generating incomes, increasing incomes, are also promoting self-employment, and they are conserving around 300,000 hectares of forests. So I wanted to share this with you because this is an example on how these multi-stakeholder partnerships are able to advance nature-based solutions. But of course, there are some challenges remaining here. This is a work in progress. The situation is that while these communities are having this progress, also the costs of sustainable land management are increasing because of the climate crisis, because of the increased threats to land tenure impurity, to deforestation. So that's why they really need to consolidate this progress to effectively continue participating in value chains. And I think this is a similar situation for most of the local communities in Latin America, so that's why the advanced investment, long-term financial mechanisms, and new global market commitments, long-term commitments are crucial for scaling up these kind of initiatives. Thank you.

Thank you. So next, I would like to turn to our representative from industry, Ms. Christiane Brunner. So we traveled to Madagascar, we traveled to Peru, And now we are in our host country, Austria. So I would like to ask Ms. Brunner, industries are facing intensifying disruptions and profit margins in highly exposed sectors are projected to decline significantly by 2035. And so here we're not only talking about industry and enterprises in the countries that are right now most affected by climate change, but we're talking globally, every single country, including our host country of Austria. So in your view and in the network that you represent, what are the most practical actions that industry can take to accelerate the emergence, deployment, and large-scale adoption of technologies, services, and practices that strengthen climate-resilient industrial development pathways. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Thank you for the invitation. And as being a local, I would like to say a very warm welcome to all of you. I hope you enjoy your stay in our beautiful city and that you can take a lot of inspiring aspects to your home country and take a lot of cooperation also with you. I actually wanted to say this in the end, but hearing from you also, I want to say this at the beginning. I'm very aware of that when I talk about adaptation and adaptation needs and challenges from an Austrian perspective, that it's something totally different in many other parts of the world. And I see it as our responsibility and also as the responsibility of our organization where we work with businesses on trying to push mitigation also as a business case, but also as a responsibility, as a global responsibility that we have. So, for industries, there are a lot of challenges, a lot of transformation needs in different areas, but the biggest risk for industry is not transformation. That actually can also be a business case. The biggest risk is disruption. And in order to avoid that, we need to talk about adaptation. And from an industry perspective, adaptation means to be able to perform in times of uncertainty, and to be able to compete or to stay competitive in times of a changing climate. Industries, and I know that from many discussions and works with our member companies, industry is ready to provide innovations. They are ready to invest. They can do the implementation. They can also scale up. What they are waiting for are clear signals, and we heard this before from many speakers, clear signals so that they can really do the investments and change their business cases, but really put the money on the table also in a long-term perspective. So, this is something that we need from politics, and it is our goal as an initiative to kind of support politics, to provide the right framework conditions, because what I see almost as the biggest gap is the translation, translation of the COP results for the individual businesses, the individual companies. I know that the companies and also the leaders of the companies, They are aware of that. They see the necessities. They see the opportunities. But as I said before, they need the framework conditions, and they need the signals and stable framework conditions in order to be able to do huge investments. And adaptation is a big issue when it comes to infrastructure, for example, and especially for investments in infrastructure, you need to have a long-term perspective. So, I think the— this is from an Austrian perspective. I think that national governments need to do a better job in order to translate the COP outcomes for businesses. This counts for mitigation as well, but for adaptation even more so.

Our—

we have different companies in our network. They are working also. We said before, business, they need to integrate it into their core business also. That is for an industry, how industry works. This is easier for mitigation because you can put a price on CO2. You can measure it. You can develop KPIs. You can even develop business models and create incomes. For adaptation, this is a little bit more difficult, and I think we also need to work on— we are discussing that with our companies— that how can we also redefine KPIs or develop new KPIs, not only in the standard business KPIs that you have. So, and it was also mentioned before that there There are also business opportunities in the adaptation sector. So far, businesses are confronted with this in— with the risk management in order to avoid risk, but there are also business opportunities when you see even in a city like Vienna to provide cooling, to provide— develop new materials for resilient infrastructure. And the companies that provide infrastructure, they are thinking about that a lot because they do not have to build— it is not only about the investments, they also think about how do I build the infrastructure, because I cannot build it for the conditions that I have today. I have to build it for the conditions that we have in 10, 20, 30 years. So, and this also has, of course, different aspects like energy security for people, but also for the industry to have a resilient infrastructure, but also— and this is a huge issue for production companies— also to have stable supply chains where we not only have to consider the situation that we are having in Austria, but the partner countries where we depend on in our supply chains. So, as I said, the most important thing for our companies is, and I ask them a lot about what are their biggest challenges to overcome to do their investment, they all tell me we just need clear signals from our governments, then we are ready to go and also ready to take responsibility not only for the company but also for society. And I think this is also an issue when we're talking about KPIs. Investments in adaptation do not only pay back to the company, but also for a whole society. And this is something that we have probably to think about. How can we make that visible in investment decisions in the companies? How can they also evaluate that as a benefit. So, I think, and this is, I think, in this context, it's clear that the businesses, the companies, they are ready to invest. We need more partnerships. We are trying to also help the government with the translation of the COP results, not only seeing this in my country, It's often like this is an environmental issue, but I think to tell them actually it's a real business issue. If you wanna stay competitive, if you wanna fulfill our international responsibility, then we, there's no other way than to invest in those things. And this is our main goal to, yeah, push both of the issues, adaptation, but also mitigation forward.

Thank you. Thank you very much, Ms. Brunner. A big round of applause for her. So now I would like to bring in the perspective from the multilateral funds, so from Mr. Spenceley and Saleha, who will join us online. We've heard so far from the experiences in Madagascar, in Peru, from the Austrian experience. about what enables delivery in adaptation and also what breaks it down. And so I would like to use the final part of this session to step back slightly and ask what is needed to really scale finance to support adaptation and how roles across public finance, industry, and implementation need to connect more effectively. So turning to yourself, Mr. Mr. Spencey, emerging and developing economies face adaptation finance needs of roughly $310 billion annually by 2035, while international public adaptation finance flows, unfortunately, as we all know, remain quite constrained. So from the perspective of the Global Environment Facility and its new program direction, where do you see the highest catalytic impact for grants-based and highly concessional finance to unlock industrial resilience and climate adaptation in the countries that are most vulnerable to climate change? Thank you. Over to you.

Thank you. Excellencies, Minister, Least Developed Countries Group Chair, colleagues, Friends, muy buenos días. Bonjour. It's I'm really grateful to be here, and I'm really grateful to Unido for pulling together, for convening this group so effectively of global leaders, global thinkers, and national leaders, and local leaders, and local innovators very thoughtfully pulled together. And this is really important. Right now in our moment of history because of the urgency of the climate crisis and because the rapid growth of the climate adaptation finance gap that you just referred to. This number, it ranges from $310 to $368 billion a year. Is, um, it comes from a, a UNEP annual study. This year, this study is called, um, Running on Empty, a very appropriate word for, for our situation with global adaptation finance. Running on empty. Um, at the same time as we have this growing adaptation finance gap, and it's growing because the climate crisis is growing, and it's growing because adaptation finance is not growing at the scale and the pace it urgently needs to. As a result or a reflection of this, the international community through the COP, and thanks to many of our negotiators here in the room, have called for and agreed on an increase up to 1% $1.3 trillion a year by 2030 for adaptation finance. $1.3 trillion. So there is ambition. We do have ambition in the adaptation finance world. Some would say that's not nearly enough, but it is $1.3 trillion. Just to give a sense of the scale of that ambition, there are approximately $40 trillion of tradable assets on the global scale every year, depending on how one calculates it. And within this $1.3 trillion, this is from all sources of finance— public, private, domestic, international. The decision from the Conference of the Parties under the UNFCCC also calls for a tripling of multilateral climate finance. Now, that's from the Global Environment Facility, the Adaptation Fund. We're very grateful to have with on the room and online, Salihah from the Adaptation Fund, the Green Climate Fund, and other sources. And it has been really motivating to be engaging with a number of project partners of multilateral climate finance, inclusive assembly, Jeff Challenge Prize winners that challenge Program for Adaptation Innovation, a number of projects represented in the room, as well as the PARSE program, $48 million roughly across 6 countries, which we hope will continue to grow, and many others. And we're delighted that UNIDO's work on climate adaptation is increasing steadily, and their portfolio in partnership with the Global Environment Facility and other sources of multilateral climate finance, because we are an ecosystem, is growing. So welcome, and may that continue. At the same time, let's be sober. The scale of the finance gap is rapidly increasing, and the urgency is massive. And for UNIDO, with all respect, this is fundamental. Sustainable development gains, industrial development gains, risk, and I think the science is clear, will be, will be lost if we're not serious about climate adaptation and resilience. The climate, the science is very clear, it's very real. Now, on the upside, we hear and we see our early movers, the private sector and innovators, realizing that this isn't just a material risk This is also an opportunity. The Global Adaptation and Resilience Investors Network has coined the term undeniable opportunity, tragically undeniable opportunity, but undeniable opportunity. Why? If you're in the cooling industry, my brother Alois referred to the cooling industry lately, earlier this morning. If you're in the cooling industry, this is a growth industry. Sitting near me is a family member who lives in the northeast of Mexico. In July and August in northeast Mexico, you're approaching 50 degrees Celsius in a place where you used to be able to live without air conditioning. You don't want to be— if you're living without air conditioning now in Linares, you're risking serious, serious issues.

Yeah.

It's a health issue. It's a life and livelihoods issue. And this is just one place in the world. It's worse in many others. If you're in the irrigation industry, this is a growth industry. Drought drives the need for irrigation and it's a business growth opportunity. I'm going to coin another term, the injustice of the of the undeniable opportunity, because the reality is that cooling and irrigation will be increased for those who can afford it. For those who can afford it. Least developed countries, SIDS, are at the front lines, Small Island Developing States, and vulnerable populations within countries often can't afford the the basic essentials of cooling, of irrigation. We all know the statistics of how much of agriculture, especially in Africa, is still rain-fed and will continue to be unless climate adaptation finance flows to the most vulnerable, to the local level. So we need to be very astute and very strategic about the way we use precious public finance to catalyze the undeniable opportunity. So it's not a tragic undeniable or an unjust undeniable opportunity, so that it flows to the most vulnerable. Now, fortunately, we have an increased number of tools thanks to innovators and thanks to leaders. Blended finance has been referred to quite a bit, entrepreneurship, Supporting entrepreneurs to develop their business solutions for adaptation and resilience.

So this—

it's often being referred to as a $1 to $2 trillion economy right now, the adaptation and resilience economy. There are basically no businesses that call themselves adaptation businesses, but there are businesses that are dealing with extreme— that are providing goods and services to deal with extreme weather. Some recent studies refer to it as a $1 to $2 trillion business. So for example, the Lemurian Climate Resilience Bond that Eri just referred to in Madagascar, a beautiful example to catalyze private finance for localized community-led adaptation and resilience and nature solutions in Madagascar. The sorts of solutions that are represented in the room and we'll be hearing from, from the GEF Inclusive Assembly Challenge, from the Challenge Program for Adaptation Innovation and others— local entrepreneurship, supporting local entrepreneurship, supporting financial inclusion and microfinance solutions so entrepreneurs can get the capital they need at just, their terms. Um, and continuing to innovate these, these approaches so that we can catalyze this $1 to $2 trillion opportunity in, in climate resilience so it benefits the most vulnerable— least developed countries, small island developing states, and vulnerable populations within, within countries. I'll pause there. Thank you.

Thank you so much. Thank you. Applause for Jason. Thank you. And lastly, we turn to the Adaptation Fund, Ms. Saleha Dubarit. So welcome. We are— we can see you on the screen virtually. COP30, as we know, reinforced a human-centered approach to adaptation. And one of the themes of this forum is inclusion, and therefore we really want to place locally defined priorities, agency, and accountability at the center. So, Salihah, reflecting on what you've heard from Madagascar, what you've heard from Peru, from what you've heard from the experiences of the industry in Austria and based on the Adaptation Fund experience, what makes locally-led adaptation genuinely fundable and scalable while protecting the LLA principles? Thank you very much. Over to you, Salia.

Thank you very much. Good morning. I hope you can hear me well. My name is Saliha Dabarczyk. I am the Programming and Innovation Unit Lead at the Adaptation Fund, and I'm sorry that I couldn't be there in person today, but it's a privilege to join you remotely. First of all, the Adaptation Fund, speaking about our experience with inclusion and innovation, Firstly, it is the only multilateral climate fund that's fully dedicated to adaptation in practically all developing countries. And so far, we've supported over $1.5 billion in funding through more than 200 projects and across more than 100 countries. Now, from its inception, the Adaptation Fund, what's baked in its mandate is support to local communities and also direct access, which is an approach to financing climate action that provides funding directly to national— we call them implementing entities in developing countries. We've also rolled out the enhanced direct access modality, which is a way to provide funding even more locally via these national implementing entities. And we have been an early adopter of locally led adaptation, which is now a cross-cutting pillar of our current strategy. Locally led adaptation is important to us because it is an approach that promotes context-specific solutions. That are responsive to local needs. So it's a way of putting resources and decisions closer to those at risk from the impacts of climate change. And by having local actors in decision-making roles, they are in the driver's seat in terms of addressing their resilience needs. And this is really important for also sustainability of such efforts beyond a project that's financed by the Adaptation Fund beyond its lifetime. So, we have also established some dedicated locally led adaptation funding windows, even though we have been supporting projects with what you may consider in alignment with LLA principles even before, since before the LLA principles have been launched. At the same time, in parallel, the Fund has been a champion of innovation, which is one of our 3 main pillars of work. Why innovation? My colleague Jason has already mentioned the cost of, well, the adaptation finance gap, and which could be on the higher end is $365 billion a year projected. Meanwhile, this is happening while the public adaptation finance flows have been falling. So it was $26 billion in 2023 and down from $28 billion in 2022. And the adaptation financing needs are therefore 12 to 14 times as much as flows at this time. What this means is that with the limited amount of funding, we really have to get creative, and innovation is one way of doing that, an important way of doing that. So quite simply, this is why we prioritize innovation as one of the strategic directions, as a pillar of our strategy as the Adaptation Fund. And in connection related to local action, from a global perspective of that global adaptation finance, less than 17%, perhaps even less than 10% according to some estimates, reach the local levels. So, the Adaptation Fund is investing in innovation for adaptation at the local levels. This is important, and I'm reflecting on the remarks made by previous panelists. This is important because the contexts that we are trying to reach are not necessarily attractive at this time to the private sector, but that can change if circumstances and conditions enabling environment innovation is successful. And we invest in innovation locally also because it's the local innovators and entrepreneurs who are able to already identify the urgent climate-related impacts and needs on the— impacts on the communities and solutions that are adaptive. As an example, we are operationalizing this approach through both our Adaptation Fund Climate Innovation Accelerator, ACFIA, a program or a partnership of programs at this point, and our new locally led adaptation aggregator programs, which are just getting set up. So, the Adaptation Fund Climate Innovation Accelerator, or AFCIA, as I'm going to call it, provides small grants for innovation through partners to local innovators. There are currently 5 AFCIA partners, including UNIDO, as you know, but UNEP, United Nations Environment Program, with climate and Technology Center Network, and United Nations Development Program have already implemented— they were the first to implement, to be awarded grants for implementing Axia programs, and those have been concluded, and I will mention a couple of words about that. But in addition to them and UNIDO, we also have World Food Program and the Pacific Community currently implementing programs. And each of these partners bring a distinct comparative advantage. For example, UNEP engages entrepreneurs and small and medium-sized enterprises to scale innovative adaptation solutions, but the UNEP CTCN focuses more on technical assistance and technology transfer, whereas UNDP is very good at working with civil society organizations and NGOs. Just as an example. And under the LLA aggregator programs, we're looking at supporting local— the focus will be on local action, including replicating perhaps some of the successful innovations. I think that is what UNIDO will be doing. And we're looking forward to that. So these are some of the mechanisms that represent a step towards closing the financing and access gaps based on the principles of locally led adaptation and also enabling scale through regional platforms. Just as an example from the AFCEA portfolio, so I mentioned that UNDP and UNEP have recently concluded the implementation of the first programs. So UNDP has financed a number of projects, but one of them is floating farms. SAFE Floating Farms is South Asian Forum for Environment, which established more than 500 floating farms that combined hydroponics and aquaculture, which responded to salinity intrusion and flooding. And this has generated $238,000 annually with expected revenue of $391,000 by 2025 and $3.5 million a year from 5,000 floating farms. So subject to replication. And SAFE has scaled this technology to Bangladesh, and Cambodia, so beyond India, with also replication requests from Sri Lanka, Vanuatu, and the Philippines, which is demonstrating strong potential for diffusion in flood-prone areas. And just to conclude, this is one example, but 59% of UNDP initiatives have transitioned from grant dependency to revenue-generating models. And these results show that ACFCEA supports the experimentation necessary to unlock scalable climate adaptation solutions. And this is a way to tackle the gaps and needs for scaling up. And let me stop there. Thank you.

Thank you so much. Big round of applause. So unfortunately, we are We are out of time, so we'll not have the time for a second round of questions. So I will— I want to close and thank all of our panelists. I really enjoyed traveling from Madagascar to Peru, hearing all the actions that the industry in Austria is taking, as well as reflection from the 2 multilateral funds, from the GEF and the Adaptation Fund. The discussion today really highlighted that industrial adaptation is no longer a question of whether, but of how and now. We also learned that delivery accelerates when finance architecture, national priority, industrial capabilities, and locally led implementation are strongly aligned. So we are really looking forward to working with all of you in the room to make climate adaptation and industrial resilience possible now and at scale and impactful. So thank you very much to all of you for joining this session. Thank you.

All right, thank you so much to our distinguished speakers. So, how are we all feeling? You can talk back to me. I promise I don't bite. Everyone still with me? Great, great, great, great, great. So, my sincere apologies. We will have to move our coffee break and expedite our next session. So, please do hang in there with us. After the session, we will be going into lunch. So thank you so much for your patience in advance. I assure you it is well worth your time. There was a lot to unpack from that session in particular. So many great points from our speakers, from ensuring prosperity for communities on the ground, bridging the financing gap, and also understanding that there are revenues to be had when we integrate resilience and adaptation into projects. I think for me that was particularly powerful to hear the revenue streams that are being generated from some of these projects. Something that also stood out to me in particular, 2 words that we don't often hear go together, policy and creativity. Can these 2 worlds actually come together. And as one of our speakers, Salihah, very greatly said, when there are, you know, when there is this financing gap and we need to mobilize more funds, indeed, we need to trigger creativity. And how do we do that best? Innovation. Innovation at its core is about designing for real needs, designing for challenges. And with our next session, we will be digging deeper into what are the various technological and innovation solutions that we can leverage in order to supercharge some of these solutions that we've been talking about today. So, With no further ado, I am very, very happy to invite to the stage our moderator of the session, Mr. Mhlanga, and speakers, Mr. Joseph Insiful, Mr. Daniel Kuhl, Mr. Yunri Zhu, and Ms. Rasima Swaruu. Please give our speakers a round of applause.

Thank you. Thank you so much, and we are honored to have you here. I'm sorry that this session is standing between you and your well-deserved lunch and tea and coffee break. We are going to make it quick, and I think that will enable us to be on time, and also to appreciate that we have Mr. Joseph in who is a citizen of Ghana, who is online, who works for the Green Climate Fund. Thank you so much. When the colleagues who manage us are ready, just tell us. Thank you. Are we ready? Is Joseph online? Okay, thank you. I like the topic of this session. It is called The future today, climate intelligence for resilient industries. We have been talking about the centrality of data, the importance of climate data to inform us to make appropriate investment decisions. We have been making the case that climate data is key for innovation. You need to quantify your climate vulnerability and make a business case out of it. So this is a very important session for us because on one end we are told that we have a lot of data, but those who are on the ground are saying that we don't have the data, or we don't have the data that we need. So there must be a disconnect somewhere. And what is also most important is we heard from the previous panel from Austria mentioning that as industry, they make long-term decisions, investment decisions. They need climate data for them to make those decisions. What kind of climate data do they need? Also, for the governments, when they make investments, making use of the fiscus to invest in roads, Infrastructure, agriculture—what kind of data do they need? So this is this session is going to to to look at issues around that. Okay, let me just check. Whilst we are we are establishing the online connection, let me take the opportunity to introduce my colleagues who are going to. Help us through this session or to have discussions. I have with me Mr. Daniel Kuo, he's the Director for Development Partnerships and Program Delivery, WMO, World Meteorological Organization. We work with them on a couple of projects. Mr. Yundri Zhu, who is the Industrial Development Officer, Division of Climate Innovation and Montreal Protocol. Works with me, and Mrs. Rasima Swarup, who is a partner of Frandi Associates, BFA Global. We have had the opportunity to work with fintech-enabled companies, accelerating companies that make use of fintech in Nigeria, Kenya, Rwanda, South Africa, and Uganda. Are we on? Just give us one minute so that we settle our technical issues. Sorry. Okay. Are you online? Yeah, I think you should allow him, you should allow him into the, in the, in the room. Let me connect you to talk to him so that she can— just hold on.

Hi. I don't see you.

In the session?

Are you in the right session?

May you send him the link for the correct session?

Sorry?

May you send him the link to the correct session?

Okay.

I don't know who— I mean, we just let them in from here. Okay.

You can speak to your colleagues.

Okay. Sorry. Just hold on just a sec. Are you sending him the correct link? Okay. He's saying he's waiting online. Hello? He said he's waiting online.

Please bear with us while we organize the technical issues.

Yeah, may you call Joseph? Next session. Next session. Yeah, okay. We're moving to session 4. Please connect this.

Uh-huh. Okay.

Session 3.

Session 3, yeah.

This one?

Yeah.

Is it session 3?

Recording in progress.

Okay, good, good. Uh, in this day of AI Industry 4.0, we seem to be making it well. Thank you, thank you. Uh, you are now online, right?

Yeah.

Okay, thank you.

Yeah, can you hear me?

Yes, Joseph, thank you so much for taking your time. Joseph is going to catch a flight in the next— Hello, can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you. Yes, we can hear you, Joseph. Can you hear us?

Yeah, I kind of hear you.

We can hear you. We can hear you.

So, um, may I just proceed with your presentation since we can hear you? That is the most important thing.

Okay.

Hi, Joseph. Can you hear us?

Yeah, I can hear you.

Can you hear me?

Yes, yes, we can hear you. Thank you so much. Thank you. Um, to give us, um, a sort of a scene-setting presentation, uh, the Green Climate Fund is one of the biggest, uh, financiers of, uh, for climate. We've invited Dr. Joseph Finsifu, who is the Senior Climate Information and Early Warning Systems Specialist, Department of Africa Region, Green Climate Fund, to share with us their work on climate information and early warning systems and talk to us about how they are using that to unlock investment and engagement from the private sector. Joseph, over to you. Thank you.

Okay, thank you very much, and warm greetings from the Green Climate Fund. I assume that you hear me very clearly. I mean, my presentation in terms of the first really details what this very important meeting is about. The Green Climate Fund is the biggest climate fund that covers over 134 countries with investment at the moment, established under the Convention to support the means of implementation. Climate information early warning systems and the broader issue of resilience is a very important area. If you look at the countries' NDCs, the NAPs, and other strategies, early warning is a very important component of every investment that the countries are making, and thus enabling the low emission and climate resilient development pathways. that is set out in the Paris Agreement and the NDCs. So my talk today is looking at unlocking productivity and innovation. I will begin by looking at some of the core elements in terms of the barriers to uptake of climate information and early warning systems. I believe that for us to be able to understand the nature of the problem and how this has come about, we really need to understand the barriers, starting from, in particular, climate information, and this also applies to early warning systems. We see very clearly that lack of enabling environment for institutional effectiveness is affecting the production and uptake of climate information. We also see limited government financing and budgetary allocation to national hydro met service and disaster management agencies is a very important barrier to these innovative approaches that is required. But it's also complicated by the nature of the climate information and warning systems. Currently, we see a lot of innovation in AI that has transformed a lot of the way we do business, and particularly when you want to have data analytics and insights, computational infrastructure, IT systems are critical. As a matter of fact, IT systems constitute about 70 to 80% of climate information and early warning systems. Climate information itself is part of the ICT broader sector. We see also market barriers, very significant in terms of creating enabling conditions. If you look at In the developed countries, the hydromet service, the use of the hydromet services and the creation of climate centers become very, very advanced, with private sector playing a very important part. Then we can also talk about the lack of scale and coverage for effective service delivery in terms of the quantitative and the qualitative aspect of the hardware and the software for ensuring delivery and uptake information. And then we also see the uncoordinated interventions that limit the effectiveness of assistance support to developing countries. So these are the barriers that we'll have to look at in terms of how we move this forward. But as I said, there's a very strong demand that far exceeds supply. If you look at the NDCs, over 80 to 90% of countries talk about the need for early warning systems, how to get fit for purpose, the early warning system, to be able to enable both adaptation and mitigation impacts on the ground. We see that climate information also has a market potential. As a matter of fact, it's well established that for every dollar of investment, you get about 4 to 36 in terms of the returns. So growing global commitment across the globe and continental as well as national And a unique opportunity to enhance coherence and complementarity of investment, and more importantly, leveraging private sector finance for public budgets and public-private partnerships. And so we see a lot of opportunities, the role of governments not only as a consumer of information but also as a server, a seller of climate services. If you look at the WMO strategy, it looks at hydrometric services being financially independent. So cost recovery and revenue generation is becoming a very important part of hydrometric services. So a lot of the legislation needs to go into really retrofitting them to be able to generate revenue. And so we see the dual synergies for both government and GCF. The government can provide important services GCF will enable additional finance, make those services bankable and sellable to enable them to generate revenue. And GCF can provide this for a number of the countries, over 100 countries in terms of the support that is being made available through pipeline development of adaptation mitigation projects. So now how do we go from what we have at the moment. If you look at the existing supply and the ideas that go into addressing the problem, we see that definitely there's a need for a paradigm shift. And this paradigm shift really has to look at the investment pathways. How do we make the hydromet service, the producers of the climate services, more fit for purpose? How do we make sure they are sustainable? How do we look at them from the lens of investment in a commercial entity with the public goods aspect integrated in it? How do we enable public-private sector partnership, which we believe strongly is the way to go? So in terms of GCF, what we have realized is that there are paradigm-shifting pathways. The pathway one that looks at really making climate information that is widely available. So, there's a need for modernizing of government services, technical capacity development, institutional effectiveness. And then once these services are provided, then we lead to the creation of relevant science-based information that can be used for early warning system, impact-based multi-hazard early warning systems and early action, as well as building infrastructure resilience across multiple sectors. and enabling resilience financing through the use of climate information. When these are brought together, then we have the kind of impact that we need in terms of robust climate science informing the design and the implementation of relevant decision-based making interventions. So what are the drivers of paradigm shift? drives innovation. First, we look at transformational planning and programming. Climate science needs to inform strategic plans. It needs to really look at how we make infrastructure resilient, how we efficiently use resources, and maximize the impact on the ground. The second driver is catalyzing climate innovation. I think one of the central aspects of this event Innovation is key. Climate service early warning system is over 70 to 80% IT services. So IoT, in terms of these systems observing networks, big data analytics, cloud computing, AI, really underpin the design and implementation of projects. Also, we need to look at mobilizing finance at scale. How do we make those institutions financially viable, and how do we scale up and replicate the knowledge across different countries, sectors, and institutions. So we think this synergetic action between the government and private sector really can be enabled by GCF's intervention. And the key things that we look for in terms of investment criteria is to look at the paradigm impact potential, So how much dollar of investment impacts on the lives and livelihoods of people. We also look at the pride and ownership potential, which shows the innovativeness of the solutions that we recommended. And then we look at the sustainable development potential in terms of the ESG and other related requirements. We look at environmental and social safeguards that are critical for this country ownership is very important. and the needs of the recipient, as well as the efficiency and effectiveness of the use of the resources that is available in designing a particular intervention. So, let me give you a flavor of what I've talked about, the paradigm-shifting pathways. How do we bring all of them together in the form of a case study showing specific application? I'll give a few of them due to time. So, when you look at climate information and early warning systems, first, I've structured this into the pathways that I've spoken about. Pathway 1 that deals with climate services, multi-hazard early warning system is pathway 2, pathway 3 that looks at use of climate information for infrastructure design and resilience financing. So if you look at pathway 1, you're looking at how this is applied in terms of extreme weather. We look at the climate data analysis and forecast that will give you the tropical cyclone track, scale, and intensity, and then as well as giving you— extracting this data into a context that the hazards prediction in terms of looking at the storm surge, flooding, inundated areas, and strong winds. And then we'll look at the situational context where we look at the impact and disaster risk estimation, and this goes into the early warning system aspects. So, in terms of this, you look at the case of hurricane, you're looking at affected population, infrastructure, disruption of services, damages due to wind and water. And then we will also look at implementation and recovery plans that deals with the risk mitigation strategies. So, by bringing these 3 paradigm-shifting pathways together, you will be able to design a project that GCF can look at it in terms of investment. And the investment criteria that I showed earlier will be used to screen this to ensure that it meets the fit-for-purpose project design and implementation. The same concept can be applied to water resources. So here I'm looking at the case of a dam where we look at how the extreme events are captured in terms of the severe storm scale, and then looking at the storm surge and flooding. And then in terms of the impact and risk estimation, we look at affected population and infrastructure, disruption of services, and damages to floods and landslides. And then at the end of it, how do we manage the flow of water in the dam based on whether we have drought or we have floods? So, these 3 priority shifting paths, really will bring you together to design a project that manages flood and drought through a dam infrastructure. So, I can give you a lot of examples. One that looks at agriculture and basically a project that we did in the Sahel, part of the Great Wall, where we bring all these ideas together and resilience financing also in terms of risk reduction, forecast-based financing. risk transfer, risk reserves, all of these coming together to address issues of flood and drought in farmlands and the loss of livelihoods and destruction of essential services. The same goes for islands, securing islands, same concept can be applied by looking at the data itself, the risks and exposure and vulnerability assessment, and then the type of mitigation strategy that is needed. This example is from the work we've done in Maldives with JAICA looking at safer islands. These ideas really inform the design, how we innovatively design and implement projects. Then the final example that I would like to give is on infrastructure as a whole. This is the comprehensive project that we've done with Africa Finance Corporation that looks at infrastructure from road to airports to ports and railways and other forms of infrastructure. The same ideas put together enables you to look at severe weather and the storms and the extreme weather that comes with it as pathway 1. And pathway 2 combines all of this, looking at the impact in terms of the affected population, number of infrastructure that is lost and disrupted, or damages due to severe weather. Weather. And then we look at the risk mitigation strategies in terms of implementing climate resilient building codes and looking at business continuity, adaptation planning, risk transfer, and resilience financing as an essential aspect of mitigation strategies. And so these are the ideas I would like to share with you in terms of how innovation is driving the way We design and implement projects on the ground. GCF has a number of windows that allows countries to access them, and depending on the nature of the project, we'll look at this as a grant or as a combination of the 4 main instruments that GCF uses: loan, equity, guarantees, and then grants. And a combination of these in terms of blended finance could be applied. So GCF really provides highly concessional finance. It's based on the requirements of the UNFCCC process. It is guided by the governance architecture of the COP, and we really look forward to working with you. We really look forward to engaging you on innovation and how this could be done. In terms of climate information and early warning systems, we have a simplified approval process that enables you to access up to $25 million of GCF finance. Other forms of complicated projects, you go beyond, and then based on the nature of the design of the project, you can access quite a range of windows in terms of GCF investment. So thank you very much. I'll be happy to take on any questions that you may have.

Thank you so much, Joseph. Can we have a round of applause? Thank you, Joseph, and let me invite the panel members here to talk to what Joseph mentioned, and perhaps we can start with WMO. Daniel, may you talk to us about what is WMO doing in this early warning systems space? And I'm more particularly interested in what Joseph said, that the government cannot only be the user of data but also can be the seller of data. What kind of services should remain in the public space and what type of services can be offered to the private space, to the private sector entities. Over to you. Thank you so much, Daniel.

Thank you so much also for inviting me to be here, and thank you to Joseph, who really set the stage very well. So, you may or may not be aware, but behind every weather forecast, every piece of weather and climate intelligence that you receive, whether through any app on your phone, if it's from a public service or a private entity, or through some boutique modeling shop, it all depends on WMO in the background. We're a bit invisible, which is okay because we're not sort of the, the engager with, with users. But without the coordination of 193 public weather services that WMO facilitates, including standardization and norms and technical regulations, none of it would be possible. So seeing this now very big explosion of innovation in terms of AI forecasting is wonderful. I mean, it's really exciting. There's a lot happening, but it also, of course, comes with risks. And I think that's one of the things I also want to address in addition to your questions. I think for us as the WMO, the World Meteorological Organization, and our members— and our members, of course, are the countries of the United Nations, but also the specifically the national weather services. So, here in Austria, it's Geosphere Austria. They have a public mandate to protect their populations. So, for us, early warning systems are, of course, something public. There needs to be a single authoritative voice. You don't want to have multiple people issuing early warnings leading to chaos. But there's also a liability issue that the government is there to protect the people. They have to issue the early warnings. They have to follow up, of course, with the early action that follows early warnings. On top of that, however, is where we get into the really innovative space right now and beyond, is basically tailor-made climate intelligence for industrial investments, investments in general, planning, foresight, and so on. And I think that's an area where we really see a lot of opportunity. So, we want to protect sort of the basic public service of early warning systems because that is a public responsibility, but facilitate the use of the data that the National Weather Services are producing to really ensure that there are bespoke solutions for investors and for planners and for everyone undertaking economic activities and also for resilience. And I think this is also where Joseph made some great comments on the public-private partnership. I think that's key for this because a lot of the national public weather services, particularly in developing countries, let's be honest, are a bit underfunded. So if they can stick to their core mandate of protecting lives and livelihood and producing authoritative data, then the private sector can build on top of that to really find and innovate solutions for climate intelligence that helps investors, that helps the economy of the country. Where we see a bit of a challenge sometimes now is with the AI boom, which is great. There's a lot of exciting things happening with AI forecasting. But of course, anyone can now on their laptop run a weather model. How good it is is a different question. And if you don't really know what you're doing, sure, you can get results. But can you trust it? Do you want to make million-dollar investments based on it. So there's a liability and a verification issue that we're trying to address. We see that for the most part, those who are investing in AI forecasting and climate intelligence are working with the National Weather Services, trying to work with us also to verify that their products are, are indeed as accurate as possible and really add value to the ecosystem out there, the global weather enterprise. But we want to make sure of that. I mean, that's something critical for protecting lives and livelihoods and for investments. So, I think we want to build on the single authoritative voice of the national government, but then on top of that, have some kind of a verifiable space, if you will, for weather and climate intelligence to really inform investment and to inform planning and management. What's also exciting is, of course, weather and climate information on its own is useful, but you need to combine it with information and data about what you're trying to achieve— vulnerabilities, resilience aspects, exposure. So, I think with AI, we're able to pull that all together in a much faster manner than we used to be even 5 years ago to really provide guidance that is customized for the solutions you're trying to invest in. And I think that's critical, is using sort of fit-for-purpose AI modeling and And modeling based on physics of the atmosphere also to ensure that you really capture the whole system and the whole situation and pull in as much data as possible. And I think, I mean, Joseph mentioned the Internet of Things. There's a lot happening out there. People are using data from cars because, you know, they have automatic windshield wipers, and that tells you if it's raining or not. It's not super accurate, but if you have 10,000 cars telling you that it's raining, it must be raining.

Yeah.

You know, also, every iPhone has actually a barometric pressure sensor inside, not actually to measure the— it's— the point is not about atmospheric pressure, but to measure the altitude. But still, that's a lot of useful data that you can imagine how many iPhones there are out there. That's a huge amount of data that we can use and integrate into our AI systems. So, I really think, for me, what's critical is that the relevance and the usefulness— and Joseph, Thank you. You used the great term fit for purpose, you know, of the National Weather Services and the whole ecosystem that builds on them is evolving. It's becoming more and more important for industrial investments and broader investments. But we also want to make sure we do this in a responsible way that ensures, of course, that no one's left behind. We want to protect the most vulnerable. That's what early warning systems are all about. But also that provides opportunities and opportunities for for growth, for investment, and ultimately for profit even. And I think that's where we're coming together as a public-private space in the global enterprise. Thank you.

Thank you so much, Daniel, and I appreciate your interventions. Can we have a quick round of applause? Thank you. There's an element of responsibility, and I think you also mentioned AI. Can I trust my AI that it is going to rain tomorrow? if it doesn't rain, how am I going to believe— to what extent am I going to believe AI anymore? But it's an important tool. I read about an article in a country where they're trying to do AI projection, but the technologists, the technicians, the people who actually have to interpret the outcomes of this AI, they're actually not able to, I mean, decipher what it means. So, there's a lot of skills required there. Yunri, may you talk to us about UNIDO's approach to impact-based early warning systems and how those are translated to real impact on the ground, and how do we try to ensure sustainability of early warning systems in terms of design and also in terms of delivery on the ground?

Thank you very much, Alois. And thank you very much for inviting me for this forum and also this section. And I also really appreciate the insightful presentation from Yusuf from the GCF, especially the long-term excellent support, and also really appreciate the partnership with their WMO and also private sector. Actually, from UNIDO, we work for the early warning system for a long time. I think there The key issue we come to the early warning system is come from the request from the member countries, because starting from their national adaptation plan, the first capacity building activities which request from the member country to us is the early warning system. We come to the early warning system because we found there are so many challenges that so far the existing early warning system, because most of the early warning systems still remain their technical and hazardous focus. They generate alerts, those issues, but not necessarily to promote their operation action across the industry and the infrastructure and across their value chain. So, this is the reason that UNIDO come in, you know, for the early warning system because as a specialized industrial organization. Our mandate is to promote inclusive and sustainable industrial development. And in UNIDO, we consider the climate risk not only as the environment and the humanity issues, but also it's a threat for the most productive economy. This means for the industrial development and also their value chain and logistics corridors as SME development and green investment. This is the reason that UNIDO came to the early warning system. We try to bring the changes, especially move from the traditional early warning system with their 3 issues, and also try to ensure the sustainability. The first one is this, as we discussed very hotly here, is regarding the AI technologies. We also work with other developed countries, especially we really appreciated the support from Japan and other European countries. We try to use AI-powered climate intelligence system and for the member countries to make their climate early warning system much more economically feasible, but also used for more countries. The second Secondly, our early warning system, we try to link with the entirety and the sector planning. As I mentioned by Yousuf, in their previous approved projects, mainly the early warning system will be used for their planning and the design of the infrastructure. However, we think that also equally important, we link to their sustainable design and also their feasibility study of the industrial development. For example, the new design of the industrial sector and also the sustainable development of the industrial sector. I just give you example here, you know, during the design of the early warning system in Mauritania, we find that there are also opportunity that we use the early warning system to provide more information for the illegal fishery. And this will be very helpful for the sustainable development of the local fishery development. This is one of the key economic sectors in the country. Thirdly, regarding the sustainability of the early warning system, actually this is a very important issue, need to be carefully considered at the very beginning stage because early warning system is not— is expensive. The operation of the early warning system is expensive. We really appreciate the financial support from the GCF. This could have built up a very good system to cover the upfront costs to establish early warning system in a country. But how we can ensure that the early warning system could be continually operate in a country in the long term, even after the project was closed? This is a question need to be answered before during the design stage of the project. We try to link with the climate service, that means the early warning system, with the climate finance. We try to find opportunity, for example, how this early warning system can use for the gender sustainable development. Also, give you example, that's also in Mauritania. We find this is through preventing the illegal fishery, in the fishery sector, we can generate more revenue for the licensing of the boat for the fishery for the central government. With this certain percentage additional cost, they can use to cover the operational cost of the early warning system in the long term. However, this is not easy. It needs to be done in the long term through the regulatory framework and also capacity building, but also continue efforts. This is also one part of activity in our project. Last but not least, we also need to consider combine with the different kind of source of the financial support, including the fund from the GCF, but also the fund from the government and also from the private sector to finally support the operational cost of the early warning system. in the long term to ensure the sustainability. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you so much, Yunri. Can we have a round of applause? I appreciate the linkages to private sector. I appreciate how this is linked to some activity that involves the return. I think what would be also most interesting, perhaps Daniel, cover this later, but to say, in Mauritania, there's an onset of locusts, right? Can those locusts be detected by the early warning system and their migration routes? So if we are only tracking physical weather elements, how about the associated impacts of climate change, like outbreak of locust diseases, and how does that inform the design of L1 systems. Um, Rasima, thank you for joining us. Thank you so much. Um, I, I really enjoyed working with BFA Global Catalyst Fund because we were able to support very local SMEs that are in the business of, um, sort of using climate data at a startup level. So we have moved from the The hydromet infrastructure, we went to standards that the WMO does, the private sector, but in my village, the private sector is one individual who's trying to make a buck, right? That's a startup. So, a few questions to you there. What business model actually scales for enterprises in climate services, and what is the biggest adoption challenge for the services that these startups face? And what role could enterprises play in growing this climate intelligence services space? Over to you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you, Eloise. And thank you for the questions, too. So it's good that you've already said big picture, and now we come down to the small picture, small meaning the more grassroots-level picture. I would say that especially when it comes to climate intelligence for resilience purposes, there's quite a lot of very specific use cases that one would actually look at. What is it that a farmer really needs? And how can climate intelligence even help a farmer become more bankable? What is it that a final financial service provider, like an insure? What is it that they need that can make them a lot more efficient, effective, and can work with farming communities? As an example, how can you make industries, local industries, a lot more resilient to various types of climate change impacts? So with that in mind, I would say that there is around 4 different business models that we have seen working based on our experience investing in companies through Catalyst Fund or accelerating them through BFA Global. The first model is more around an infrastructure as a service where, you know, the startup would really leverage a lot of the climate intelligence data, gather it, process it in such a way that it's usable by financial service providers like insurance companies for claims validation, claims processing, making, you know, the processing time significantly shorter. In one case, a company from Kenya, Agrails, they've actually reduced the time from months of claims validation processing to minutes. And what that really helps with is actually making insurance viable for the insurer as well as for the farmer. So, that's infrastructure as a service for financial service providers. The other model is actually a lot more bundled, I would say, which uses a combination of hardware, software, and an element of human touch. And this is really working with those communities, those vulnerable communities that actually need the human touch to be able to use or effectively benefit from the products and services that they're being offered. So an example here is a company in Tanzania that uses soil sensors in addition to various types of other climate data and processes it in such a way that they get agroclimate insights that are very specific to the farming communities. How do the farmers really make sense of it? What do they do? They have these farmer extension services called Farmer Excellence Centers, where the farmers then get to learn about the health of their soil, the type of the climate that they're about to be working with, and what that means for their own agricultural practices. So that bundled model has been scaling. Growing and becoming a lot more effective across agro-communities. The third model, I would say, is actually more industry-oriented, and that's software as a service, keeping ESG and operational efficiencies in mind. This is where you would think about a company that is leveraging a lot of different types of climate data sources including and aggregating energy usage, water usage, and a lot of other such parameters to create, you know, sustainability reporting, but also operational efficiency maps so that the industry or the specific company or organization can actually look at their climate risks and vulnerabilities at an operational level and understand what they have to do moving forward. A company we worked with, in fact, through the fintech project, The Awareness Company in South Africa, has been working very hard to embed climate intelligence in their product called Hydra. I would say the 4th model is a bit more related to yield and performance improvement monetization. So this is where again, we're using satellite data and working very specifically also with microclimate data to help farmers really focus on their crops and as using variations of water, fertilizer, other types of inputs that can help them improve their yields and the yield improvement is where monetization then comes in. And the products and services are sold to cooperatives that are willing to pay, so the farmer doesn't have to pay them directly. I'd say these are primarily the 4 business models that are really bubbling up based on our experience so far. Bottlenecks, actually, I think we've talked a lot about them. Joseph mentioned quite a few. Daniel mentioned quite a few. To really make these solutions work, you need to overlay a lot of data. So the big primary problem, one of them, is data trust, privacy, sovereignty of data. How would a farmer really trust a remote service that's being provided to them? In some models, these are B2B models, meaning they're selling to other corporates. Corporates take a long time to make decisions. And there are varying cash flows that small local entrepreneurs have to manage. So those are specific bottlenecks that are very context dependent. And when it comes to climate intelligence, something you also mentioned was you know the sophistication of these models. AI modeling has to be accurate. You need the in-house skill set for this, and often a lot of enterprises. May not have that kind of skill set, or they may not be able to afford that kind of skill set. So keeping all of that in mind, we do know that enterprises play a very, very big role. In fact, it's very central to the growth of the local communities. Communities know them, they trust them, they have a big economic role to play here as well. They understand the microclimate, climate very well. And so really, the solution here is something we have all been talking about, really focusing on creating a hybrid solution set of giving them some technical support where they need it most to build out these products and services, to identify the right kind of business model as quickly as possible so they can make money faster and also show that impact faster. And of course, add that to very patient long-term capital, capital that can be in form of grants, blended finance, and something that can really help them innovate and test. And even if they fail, the capital helps them, you know, pivot and ensure that the next product is evolved and and in fact relevant. So I would— I'll pause there.

Thank you so much, Rasima. Could we give her a round of applause? We are going to break for lunch here, lunch and coffee. You can take it the other way, coffee then lunch or lunch after coffee. and then after that coffee, I want to invite you to express our appreciation to the panel members for this session. We've just done the first touch. Let's all together ride the horse on fire, discussing tomorrow, today, how climate intelligence can help us to support resilient industries, resilient economies and startups that brings about resilience. I mean, technology products and services. Most importantly for us as UNIDO, we have a portfolio on climate intelligence ecosystems because we are passionate about linking climate data into the mainstream economy that we can work with the member states and apply for funding the GCF please feel free to reach to my colleague Yunri. We are doing that in partnership with WMO. I've done my sales pitch. I look— looking forward to seeing you at 2 o'clock. Let me hand over to the MC. Thank you so much.

Thank you so much, Mr. Nhlanga and speakers, and thank you all for your patience. And I invite you all to enjoy the lunch and looking forward catching up at 2 PM. Thank you.