Tag Archives: World Bank

Mongabay: COP29: With public climate finance shortfall, is investment capital a way forward?

The 29th United Nations climate summit was held in Baku, Azerbaijan, or COP29, the third consecutive major oil producer to host the international meeting of 196 nations. In each, the fossil fuel industry presence has been larger than most nations, and their influence far greater than the small, vulnerable nations suffering the most from climate impacts. Photo by David Akana/Mongabay

Between 2014 and 2021, I traveled to cover seven UN climate summits. I considered traveling to Azerbaijan for my eighth, but opted instead to cover my first UN biodiversity summit in Cali, Colombia. I was, however, asked by Mongabay editors to write a pre-story for COP29. I agreed. Because the overriding issue in Baku will be identifying the trillions needed for climate action (transition to renewable energy, low-carbon transportation, forest and wetlands protections, paying vulnerable nations for loss and damage), this story focuses exclusively on the issue of finance.

I was fortunate in Colombia to meet two experts in finance who agreed to be primary sources for my story: Andrew Deutz of World Wildlife Fund and Valerie Hickey of the World Bank. Deutz connected me with another exceptionally good source, economist Barbara Buchner with the Climate Policy Initiative.

The story hinges in large part on this reality: the wealthy nations of the G-20 have year after year failed to come close to meeting their promises of contributing billions of dollars to a range of COP-approved funds for climate action. For example, about $116 billion has been mobilized from wealthy nations, but the need is estimated at $2 trillion. Thus, the question becomes whether independent financial institutions such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, plus a host of private investment houses will step in and fill the gap, or at least some of it. Some experts say the money is there if institutions can secure a modest return on investment; critics howl that loans and investments only serve to burden poor countries — entirely blameless in the climate crisis — with more debt. My story explains the issues and opportunities.

Mongabay: COP16 biodiversity meeting recap: Progress made, but finance lags

U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres spoke at COP16 on Oct. 30: “Human activities have already altered three-quarters of Earth’s land surface and two-thirds of its waters. And no country, rich or poor, is immune to this devastation,” he said. “To survive, humanity must make peace with nature. We must transform our economic models — shifting our production and consumption to nature-positive practices. Renewable energy, sustainable supply chains and zero-waste policies are not optional. They must become the default option for both governments and businesses.” Image by Justin Catanoso for Mongabay.

This wrap up story from Cali, Colombia — an overview of the outcomes, good and bad, from the 16th United Nations Convention on Biodiversity (COP16) — started coming together on Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024, my last day at the summit. I focused on a half-dozen or so major issues, interviewed about that many sources one-on-one, attended several press conferences and generally took in the mood of the penultimate day of the two-week meeting.

By Saturday, November 2, after COP16 was gaveled to a premature close, the press releases started rolling in, as did WhatsApp messages from a variety of sources eager to weigh in with final thoughts. One comment from an event I covered days earlier stuck with me: delegates at this biodiversity COP need to celebrate positive outcomes, not simply wallow, however appropriately, in all the measures falling short.

“You can’t rally a constituency around dread and fear,” said Valerie Hickey, global director for the World Bank’s division on environment, natural resources and oceans.

So in consultation with my editor, I organized this story around highlighting what went right and almost- right before describing critical items that fell demoralizingly short. I ended by giving voice to an 27-year-old Indigenous woman from Chile — a courageous and outspoken advocate for human rights and the environment — whom I met by chance on a crowded shuttle bus one evening.

There were some legitimately promising outcomes from Cali, two of which center on regenerating pools of funding for conservation efforts throughout the tropical world. But overall, as one NGO leader from England put it: “The pace of COP16 negotiations did not reflect the urgency of the crisis we are facing.”

True enough, but the progress made is still welcomed. The problem is, so much more is needed in a vanishingly short amount of time to, at best, slow the rate of climate calamities and biodiversity extinctions around the world.

In the plenary hall, delegates from 177 nations debated the language and intent of the principles and rules guiding the global protection of forests, oceans and biodiversity. The meeting ended abruptly on Saturday, Nov. 2, when too many delegates had to leave to catch flights as COP16 ran past its designated end time. Negotiations are to resume at an unspecified date in Bangkok. Image by Justin Catanoso for Mongabay.

Mongabay: COP16/CBD — Global biodiversity financiers strategize at COP16 to end ‘perverse subsidies’

The 16th United Nations biodiversity summit, called COP16, is being held in Cali, Colombia, near the country’s mountainous Pacific coast. The motto for the meeting is also its goal: Paz con la Naturaleza — Peace with Nature. Image by Justin Catanoso for Mongabay.

Since 2014, I’ve covered seven of the last nice United Nations climate summits, the last one in Glasgow, Scotland, during the pandemic, in 2021. In 2024, I decided against traveling to Baku, Azerbaijan, for COP29, and go south instead, to Cali, Columbia, to cover my first UN Convention on Biological Diversity, the 16th such biennial Conference of the Parties. I’m glad I did.

COP16 is a far smaller meeting than any of the climate COPs I’ve covered, with 23,000 attendees instead of the 50,000 in Glasgow and more than 100,000 in 2023 in Dubai. The venue outside of Cali felt spacious and easier to navigate. The pace was significantly less harried. The two media centers were conveniently located not far from the entrance, and the press conference room was nearby (the last several climate meetings seemed intent on locating journalists are far from their sources and press conference rooms as physically possible). Some drawbacks: fewer NGOs provided daily briefings of the day-before’s happenings and fewer contextual press conferences were held until the very end. This made it difficult for this newcomer to the CBD to get a handle on what was happening. But with some diligent (perhaps manic) sourcing, I moved up the learning curve and spotted stories I needed to pursue.

Here’s my first one, which I started reporting on before I left for Colombia: a daylong, side event that focused on a crucial element of the CBD agreement approved during COP15 (in Montreal in 2022) — a vow to identify the more than $1.7 trillion paid out in subsidies and tax breaks that actually harm and destroy forests, oceans and species ($650 billion to fossil fuel companies alone), and redirect that money to conservation initiatives. The morning session produced a clear and substantive panel discussion, with a keynote speech by a British member of parliament, Barry Gardiner. He has been pushing back for a decade against the UK subsides paid to Drax ($1 billion annually) to burn wood pellets largely from North Carolina. I’ve heard about him for years. It was a pleasure to finally hear him speak and talk with him afterwards. My first few days in Cali — the lush, friendly home of salsa dancing — proved a solid start to my week at COP16.

Barry Gardiner, a Labour Party member of the British Parliament since 1997, was the keynote speaker on Sunday, Oct. 27, at a daylong meeting to discuss concrete plans to phase out $1.7 trillion in global economic subsidies known to cause environmental damage around the world. The trick of course, will be getting it done. Image by Justin Catanoso for Mongabay.

Mongabay: Consensus grows — climate-smart agriculture key to Paris Agreement goals

The world’s agriculture sector, which covers 40 percent of the earth’s surface, accounts for a quarter of greenhouse gas emissions. Cattle is a big cause of methane gas.

I started working on this story early on while at COP23 in Bonn, Germany in November 2017. Jason Funk, a good source and associate director of land use for the Center for Carbon Removal, kept me up to date on negotiations regarding the world’s vast and varied agriculture sector and its connection to carbon emissions. As always, the problem has been known for years; also as always, lots of talk and zero action came of six years of meetings. Until the last week of COP23. Jason was so stunned that he was barely enthusiastic when he told me the news of the breakthrough outside the main plenary hall.

I knew this was a story I would pursue after I returned from Germany, and my editor, Glenn Scherer, was glad to have it as a tie-in to the Global Landscapes Forum, also held in Bonn a month after COP23. Meeting Bronson Griscom of The Nature Conservancy and his high-level report about how much the land sector can contribute to climate mitigation was a lucky break.

If the world has any chance of meeting the Paris Agreement goals for emission reductions and slowing the rate of global warming, all levers must be pulled — among them how we farm and what we eat.

Now starring as diplomat: Bianca Jagger vigorously defends forests at UN climate change talks

Bianca Jagger on Sunday morning, Dec. 7, in Lima, Peru, at an event connected to the UN climate talks. She is speaking to Heru Prasetyo, a climate change expert from Indonesia. Photo by Justin Catanoso.

Note: I am in Lima, Peru, reporting on the COP20, the 20th annual United Nations climate negotiations. I arrived Dec. 6 and will remain through the end of the conference on Dec. 12. This is my first story.

LIMA, Peru – Whatever her youthful reputation as the wife of a world-famous rock star and glittery jet setter, Bianca Jagger has committed much of the past 30 years of her life to advancing causes associated with human rights and environmental protection in the developing world.

On Sunday morning, during a side event connected with the annual UN climate negotiations here in Lima, Peru, the 69-year-old Jagger sounded every bit the international diplomat she’s become in recent years. Delivering an impassioned 13-minute talk during a panel discussion, she spoke bluntly about the perils of climate change and the need to restore both destroyed and degraded forests as the best strategy to reduce the ongoing damage.

“Climate change will affect everyone, everywhere, in every nation, in every echelon of society, in the developing world and the developed world,” said Jagger, a native of Nicaragua and British citizen. “We will all suffer the catastrophic consequences of rising sea levels, ocean acidification, food scarcity and political unrest. But some of the most vulnerable communities in the world are bearing a disproportionate burden of the harm without having significantly contributed to the cost. This is a terrible injustice.”

Photo by Justin Catanoso

Noting that climate experts predict that 2014 will become the hottest year on record, Jagger warned: “Time is running out. Inaction will lead to severe and irreversible damage.”

In another time, in another setting, Jagger may have been the star attraction at an event such as this with fans and paparazzi swarming to bask in her celebrity. There was little of that in evidence Sunday morning during the Global Landscapes Forum held at the Westin Lima Hotel & Convention Center.

WITH A CROWD of mostly influential scientists, top environmental activists and leading figures from the United Nations, World Bank and World Wildlife Fund, Jagger arrived without fanfare as the founder of the London-based Bianca Jagger Human Rights Foundation. She appeared elegantly striking just the same, dressed in a full-length white wool coat with sparkling flats and leaning on a Dalmatian-spotted cane. She greeted a small knot of well wishers and quietly took her place on stage. Three other panels were taking place at the same time; Jagger’s panel – “A new climate agenda? Moving forward with adaptation-based mitigation” – attracted about 100 people.

Jagger noted that two years ago, she was appointed an ambassador to the Bonn Challenge, which aims to restore 150 million hectares (370 million acres) of degraded or deforested land around the world by 2020.

“I took on this role because I believe the objective of the Bonn Challenge is critical and more importantly, it is achievable,” she said. “Frankly, it is one of the more achievable initiatives trying to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and improve the lives of people. Achieving the Bonn Challenge goal could sequester 1 gigaton of carbon dioxide a year, which would reduce our current emissions by up to 17 percent. That is really a very important advance from a restoration program.”

Bianca Jagger, before the start of the panel discussion. Photo by Justin Catanoso

The two-day landscape forum focused largely on the underappreciated role forests play globally in slowing the rate of climate change by absorbing tons and tons of greenhouse gas emissions annually through the process of photosynthesis. Millions of acres of tropical forests around the world (which do the most work in carbon sequestration) are destroyed for agriculture, mining and extraction. The clear-cutting is often far more than is necessary and at great costs to biodiversity and the indigenous peoples who make their homes and living in such forests.

A PRIMARY GOAL of these 20^th annual UN climate talks is for governmental and environmental leaders from 200 countries to draft a legally binding agreement that can be signed as a global treaty next year in Paris. Despite accords that came out of Kyoto (1997) and Copenhagen (2009), no treaty currently exists, even as the accumulating evidence of ongoing, manmade climate change continues to pile up.

“Time is running out. Inaction will lead to severe and irreversible damage.” — Bianca Jagger

While progress appears to be halting after the first of two weeks of negotiations, the Lima draft is hoped to contain an array of strategies to slow the rate of greenhouse gas emissions largely through the reduction of burning fossil fuels for energy and transportation. Such reductions are seen as vital to hold global warming below 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit in the next 50 to 85 years. Beyond that point, scientists predict far worse extreme weather patterns than we now see, greater coastal erosion, more water shortages and increased food scarcity than is already cropping up around the globe.

Reducing greenhouse gas emissions – the airborne layer of chemicals in the atmosphere responsible for global warming – can go beyond cutting back the extracting and burning of fossil fuels. Other strategies include the expansion of alternative energy sources, greater fuel efficiencies in transportation, as well as similar efficiencies in home and building construction and lighting and appliances.

Increasingly, as the landscape forum emphasized and as Jagger stressed in her talk, the massive preservation of existing tropical forests, and replanting ones that have been damaged and destroyed, can play a significant role — if not the most important role — in staving off catastrophic climate change.

Jagger said the United States, along with countries such as Rwanda, Costa Rica, Colombia, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Guatemala have already committed to restore some 51 million hectares (126 million acres) of forests by 2020 as part of the Bonn Challenge. She lauded large-scale restoration efforts in China and Brazil, too.

“It is true that governments have not come forward to do what is necessary,” Jagger said. “It is true that we don’t have a legally binding treaty now. But if we can continue with initiatives like the Bonn Challenge, we would see a difference. Forests are essential to our future.”

Justin Catanoso is a freelance journalist based in North Carolina and director of journalism at Wake Forest University. His environmental reporting is supported in part by the Wake Forest Center for Energy, Environment and Sustainability, and the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting in Washington, D.C.