#COP29 DPM HON. BIMAN PRASAD'S ADDRESS AT THE 6TH HIGH LEVEL MINISTERIAL DIALOGUE ON CLIMATE FINANCE

- What are the lessons learned from the delivery of the goal and which good practices could be maintained and improved by governments and international climate finance providers to address the needs of developing countries?
- How can climate finance delivery strike a balance between responding to mitigation and adaptation needs?
- How can the use of innovative instruments further scale up climate finance mobilisation, particularly concessional finance for climate action in developing countries?
 
Excellencies;
Ladies and Gentlemen.
The practical realities of navigating the evolving landscape of international funds, bilateral initiatives, grant opportunities, and the overlapping mandates of climate finance arrangements is a major challenge for capacity constrained governments.

This challenge is further exacerbated by a severe lack of transparency and accountability across the financing landscape, high transaction costs, reliance on intermediaries, and a diversity of bureaucratic hurdles which rely on an army of specialist consultants to overcome. As a result the climate financing regime has been described as the ‘wild west’1, ‘a mess’2, ‘inefficient, insufficient, unfair3’ and ‘broken’.
 
The climate finance paradigm continues to promote unhelpful trends - a focus on projects - the use of preferred partners - the avoidance of national systems - a predilection for the financing of workshops and studies over on the ground investments. We need to shift away from the pilot project to the transformation plan – we need to lock in consistent financing that allows robust long-term national programs to be delivered.
 
For Fiji and SIDS, we cannot address the burden of climate change through the mishmash of donor driven initiatives and third party projects that breed fragmentation and undermine our ability to coordinate and combine efforts to deliver outcomes. For finance to be fit for purpose it needs to be flexible and responsive not locked in place by a contract and schedule of deliverables written in a vacuum years ago.
 
The reality is that climate finance continues to be tied up in external interests, impacted by inter-organisation competition and overlapping mandates, and shaped by external preferences, concepts, and priorities.
 
As it stands, our officials are spending more time steering small projects and singular initiatives -managing climate finance access proposals and processes - than they are overseeing the delivery of specific national policies. This piece-meal approach flys in the face of the whole-of-government climate mainstreaming approaches that we as Parties have promoted for decades. Rather than building our capacity, in most cases, climate finance in its current form is straining it.

The special needs and circumstances of SIDS and LDCs need to be given due treatment within the NCQG because this is about equity. Let us be clear - the recognition of special circumstances under the UNFCCC and Paris agreement is about levelling the playing field. It is not about creating undo advantage.

Excellencies, ultimately the NCQG is about solidarity and responsiveness.
 
The NCQG needs to be understood as the engine that will power transition and climate protection. To be somewhat crude - this is the ‘put your money where your mouth is’ moment. The 1.5c temperature goal, and the Paris Agreement itself – will not be deliverable from both an economic and scientific perspective if we do not invest right, if we don’t enable.
 
The NCQG is critical for aligning our priorities and addressing major inconsistencies. 7 trillion USD was spent by developed and developing countries on Fossil fuel subsidies in 2022. 70 times more than the unmet 2020 $100bn goal and seven times what many developing countries are seeking to secure here in Baku.

According to UNEP the financing that is currently flowing to support adaptation is between 1/10 and 1/18 of what is required to meet adaptation needs (UNEP, 2023). The failure of parties to reduce global emissions over the last three decades paired with significant short falls in the funding needed to build resilience has increased the scale of loss and damage arising from climate change impacts and increasing the scale of the loss and damage that will be experienced in the future.

This is the reality - finance is flowing in exactly the wrong direction to perpetuate the very problem we are here to address. This is market distortion - an arrangement that is consciously putting the brakes on transition. It is perpetuating industries that have no future while at the same time putting our future at risk.

What many Parties are prioritising is a very dangerous form of short-termism that cannot be scientifically, economically, or socially justified.

Access to new and additional financing for addressing loss and damage is a critical means to ensure existing financing is not diverted away from public services, long-term adaptation measures, and structural reform efforts to address urgent loss and damage needs following a disaster event, crop failure, or climate change induced drought.
 
We need support to set strategies that ensure resilience building efforts can continue uninterrupted– reducing long term exposure and mitigating the need for loss and damage financing in the future.

Financing for loss and damage must stand as the third pillar of climate finance or else the entirety of our efforts will be unbalanced and compromised.
 
Excellences I hope, despite the challenges of this process, we can see the wood despite the trees and deliver leadership rather than rhetoric, because we know the cost of inaction will far surpass any precedent.
 
Thank you