Finance Forum for Asia and the Pacific calls for local and regional approach to unleashing blended finance

The second of the ‘Regional Finance Forums’ – convened by the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), the incoming Egyptian Presidency of COP27 and the UN Climate Change High Level Champions for COP26 and COP27 — has concluded in Bangkok.

Hosted at the headquarters of ESCAP, it continues a series of Forums launched last month which focus on implementation and delivering urgent near-term action as well as accelerating progress to catalyse forward-looking opportunities.

High-Level Champion for Egypt, Dr. Mahmoud Mohieldin, said: “we need a holistic approach to the SDG 13, climate action, but we should not forget that, we are living in a complex world. As we focus on implementing the Paris Agreement, the interdependencies on food security, energy access, and financing efforts become evident. In this, regionalizing and localising our efforts to accelerate the deployment of blended finance with government, the public and private sector is key.”

The Forum discussed ten core climate projects across Asia and the Pacific — including financing Nationally Determined Contributions, public-private partnerships on infrastructure, financing green grids and mobilizing green financing through capital markets — totalling $41.1 billion in investment towards building climate mitigation, adaptation and resilience.

For example, the session on unlocking climate finance for green grid investments informed stakeholders about the need for and role of a public-private-partnership mobilization of climate finance in energy transmission, such as the Green Grids Initiative, launched at COP26.

At the closing plenary, Armida Alisjahbana, Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations and Executive Secretary of ESCAP said: “The potential of evolving climate finance especially enabling environments for capital markets and green bonds is an important stepping stone and cannot be a one off effort to be built across a series forums for regional and global collaboration.”

High-Level Champion for Egypt, Dr. Mahmoud Mohieldin, reflected on the outcome of the forum by highlighting: “We need to take this holistic approach which was represented in projects presented, while they were thematically focused, we can see the impacts are SDG focused resulting in alignment of the Paris Agreement and SDGs.”

One of the key questions on delegates’ minds at the Forum concerned the decreased reliability of debt financing and opening the way for partnerships through investments, grants, and $100 billion to be fulfilled through a transparent and global assessment of climate action involving all actors including business leaders, regional capitals and youth groups.

The projects for Asia and Pacific will provide input into a compendium of initiatives to be presented to the United Nations Secretary-General at COP27.

The next Forums will take place in:

• Santiago, Chile (1-2 September) – A forum on climate finance and the energy transition, covering Latin America and the Caribbean.
• Beirut, Lebanon (15 September) – A one-day regional forum on climate finance needs and investment opportunities in Arab States.
• Geneva, Switzerland (20 September) – High-Level Roundtable on ‘enhancing sustainable management and financing for the critical raw materials required for low-carbon transitions’

For media inquiries, please, contact Matthew Phillips matthewphillips@climatechampions.team .