(MENAFN- IANS) Dubai, Dec 3 (IANS) During the World Climate Action Summit, the COP28 Presidency and its partners on Sunday presented a series of new and ambitious initiatives with an initial $1.7 billion of committed finance to simultaneously meet climate and biodiversity goals.
Brazil President Lula da Silva and the COP28 Presidency also announced a two-year partnership to mobilise new resources and Political support for nature on the road to COP30 in Belem.
"Ensuring that nature in its total and most holistic form is recognised, supported, and funded as a prerequisite to climate action has been a priority for the COP28 Presidency," said Razan Khalifa Al Mubarak, the UN Climate Change High-Level Champion for COP28.
"This remarkable political leadership coupled with support and finance from non-state actors is a testament to the fundamental role of nature not just for this COP but for all future COPs to come."
In the session, heads of state and government unveiled national and regional investment plans and partnerships focused on nature-climate action to deliver on the Paris Agreement and the recently adopted Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework.
Al Mubarak announced that the United Arab Emirates (UAE) would contribute $100 million of new finance for nature-climate projects, with an initial $30 million investment in Ghanaian government's 'Resilient Ghana' plan.
'Resilient Ghana' was launched by Ghanaian President Nana Akufo-Addo with an additional $80 million of support from Canada, Singapore, the US and other private sector aligned initiatives such as the LEAF Coalition, supplementing the UAE's $30 million.
Siaosi 'Ofakivahafolau Sovaleni, the Prime Minister of Tonga, announced $100million of finance for Pacific Small Island Developing States (P-SIDS) from the Bezos Earth Fund for the 'Unlocking Blue Pacific Prosperity Plan' to protect 30 per cent of the countries' waters and exclusive economic zones by 2030 -- representing an area larger than the surface of the moon.
A group of philanthropies, including Bloomberg Philanthropies, Builders Vision and Oceankind, announced $250 million of new finance under the Ocean Resilience Climate Alliance (ORCA), targeting protection for vulnerable marine areas, ocean-based mitigation efforts, and research on climate impacts.
President Emmanuel Macron of France confirmed funding for three forest finance packages, including $100 million for Papua New Guinea, and $50 million for Congo, to drive private finance of conservation and local development through verifiable carbon credit transactions.
Indonesian President Joko Widodo and Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store highlighted a $100 million partnership in support of Indonesia's pioneering FOLU Net Sink 2030 plan.
The Asian Development Bank, along with the OPEC Fund, Saudi Arabia, AFD, France, and the ASEAN Catalytic Green Finance Facility at the Green Climate Fund, announced the Nature Finance Hub, a new initiative committing to mobilise $1 billion from development partners, with the intention of mobilising a further $2 billion in additional private finance capital by 2030 into nature-focused climate projects.
These nature-climate plans also drive progress on previous commitments, including COP26's Glasgow Leaders' Declaration, which saw 145 countries agree to halt and reverse forest loss and land degradation by 2030, as well as the landmark Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework agreed last December, which saw 196 countries agree on a common framework to halt total nature loss by 2030.
Addressing nature-loss can save $104 billion in adaptation costs and has the potential to provide upwards of 30 percent of the CO2 mitigation action needed by 2030.
Additionally, as around 50 percent of global GDP is directly or indirectly dependent on nature and other ecosystem services, the conservation and restoration of natural ecosystems supports economic prosperity, with the potential to create nearly 395 billion more jobs and to protect one billion people whose livelihoods are directly dependent on nature.
--IANS
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