COP28 | 30 November – 13 December 2023 World Climate Conference in Dubai

Schulze: “In these difficult times, the world urgently needed this signal of unity. The conference has succeeded in building more trust between Europe and the developing countries again. The good start of the conference, with the swift agreement on the new Loss and Damage Fund, has helped to make this possible.”

The climate issue is also a debt issue, because debt and a country’s vulnerability to climate change are closely linked. Debt can hinder urgently needed investments in climate change mitigation and adaptation. This in turn increases a country’s vulnerability to extreme weather events. That is why Germany offers “debt-for-climate” swaps. In a debt-for-climate swap, rather than repaying its debts to Germany, a country instead invests the money in climate action.

Now that the UN Climate Change Conference in Dubai has approved the new fund responding to loss and damage right at the start of the meeting, the implementation is getting a kick-start. Germany and the Vulnerable Twenty Group (V20) will be contributing some principles to the design of the Fund which are based on their practical experience with the Global Shield against Climate Risks, launched by Germany and the V20 a year ago as trailblazer. Germany, represented by Development Minister Svenja Schulze, and Ghana, chair of the V20, today held a joint press conference in Dubai to highlight these points.

At the conference for the replenishment of the Green Climate Fund hosted in Bonn by Germany a total of 9.322 billion US dollars was pledged. This funding will be used between 2024 and 2027 to finance projects that will drive forward climate action and the energy transition in developing countries and emerging economies, and will help developing countries particularly affected by climate change cope better with the impacts of global warming.

Germany increased its international climate finance to a new all-time high in 2022. In total, the German government provided 6.39 billion euros in budget funding last year for climate change mitigation and adaptation in developing countries. The figure has now been reported to the EU Commission, which gathers the data for the entire EU. That means that the target of investing 6 billion euros of public funds in climate finance, which Chancellor Olaf Scholz had pledged to achieve by 2025, has already been met three years ahead of schedule.

The impacts of climate change threaten the livelihoods of many people, especially in vulnerable countries. At the Climate Conference in Egypt (COP27), an agreement was reached to set up a new international financing architecture to deal with loss and damage, including a new fund.

The Global Shield against Climate Risks is a joint initiative of the G7 and the V20 (an association of countries particularly threatened by climate change). It bundles activities in the field of climate risk insurance and prevention.

Climate change is one of the greatest challenges of our time. Only together can we identify ambitious solutions and implement them fast enough. The BMZ supports developing countries and emerging economies with a wide range of measures and programmes to achieve their climate commitments and to protect themselves against the impacts of climate change.

Three projects from Madagascar, India and Ethiopia illustrate how digital climate information services, circular economy and landscape approaches can contribute to climate change adaptation.

The increasing number and intensity of droughts, floods, and heavy rainfall show that the climate crisis is equally a water crisis. The BMZ understands water as a central element in advancing climate change adaptation and mitigation goals.

Climate risk management helps address the remaining climate risks by using a range of effective and innovative tools and measures to prevent, minimise and manage loss and damage.