15 November 2023 – Ahead of COP28, the board of the V20 Finance Ministers and G7 initiative Global Shield against Climate Risks met virtually on November 15 to further scale up pre-arranged finance solutions to mitigate the impacts of climate disasters, particularly in climate-vulnerable countries.
Chaired by Prof. George Gyan-Baffour, representing the V20 Chair and Ghana’s Minister of Finance Ken Ofori-Atta, and Dr. Bärbel Kofler, Parliamentary State Secretary to the Federal Minister for Economic Cooperation and Development, Germany, the board discussed how the In-Country Processes have already begun in Ghana and Pakistan, while a regional approach is being developed for Pacific Island countries.
The meeting successfully brought together board members from both vulnerable and supporting countries with the common aim to close protection gaps in climate-vulnerable countries. Board members explored opportunities and challenges they foresaw in the run up to COP28, especially in the context of the emerging international financial architecture under Loss and Damage.
Here, crucial insights were provided by Co-Chair Dr. Bärbel Kofler, who stressed that “concrete solutions for how to support marginalized people and particularly vulnerable countries in dealing with loss and damage from climate change are needed more than ever. The Global Shield is working to give just that – scaling up pre-arranged finance for those countries that need it the most.”
Prof. George Gyan-Baffour shared an update from Ghana’s experience as the first pathfinder country, which is currently finalizing its Request for Support to the Global Shield after a series of multi-stakeholder workshops: “Our experience earlier this year demonstrates that the need for financial protection currently outweighs available financing. With the Global Shield, we aim to close the financial protection gap, as well as expand our adaptive capacity to deal with the future and ongoing impacts of the climate.”
Guest speaker Dane McQueen, Director of Programs and Partnerships for COP28, highlighted in his keynote that the Global Shield is one of the most concrete instruments on the market that can provide valuable lessons learnt for the negotiations at COP28. Vositha Wijenayake, Executive Director of SLYCAN Trust Global, representing Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) as observer in the meeting, agreed that the Global Shield can serve as a key building block of the Loss and Damage financial architecture as it enhances synergies between relevant stakeholders and programs. Moreover, she stressed that CSOs can support the Global Shield as implementing organizations for capacity building, community engagement, and Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning.
High-level board members from Barbados, France, Ireland, The Philippines, Samoa, Denmark, Uganda, Fiji, and the United Kingdom expressed their views on how the Global Shield can address the challenges that climate-vulnerable countries face. His Excellency Ryan Straughn, Minister of Finance from Barbados, highlighted that climate disasters such as tropical cyclones and excessive rainfall pose an existential threat to small island states. Hence, there is an urgent need to generate access to pre-arranged finance, build resilience, and define trigger points before a disaster occurs to ensure quick recovery. The board members agreed that the Global Shield brings together a strong coalition of vulnerable and supporting countries that can make meaningful progress in minimizing the impacts of climate change.
The Global Shield Board also adopted the Global Shield Governance Charter and the Country Prioritization Framework with its Technical Annex.
COP28 will represent another milestone for the Global Shield in its endeavor to support the most vulnerable countries and communities. The Call for Expression of Interest for the next cohort of countries eligible for support is set to be announced at COP28.
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FURTHER INFORMATION
All documents that have been endorsed by the Global Shield Board are available online and can be found here.
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CONTACTS
Global Shield secretariat: secretariat@globalshield.org
V20 secretariat: media@v-20.org