Changing the Finance, Financing the Change
Climate finance refers to local, national, or transnational financing, which may be drawn from public, private and alternative sources of financing. Climate finance is critical to addressing climate change because large-scale investments are required to significantly reduce emissions, notably in sectors that emit large quantities of greenhouse gases. Climate finance is equally important for adaptation, for which significant financial resources will be similarly required to allow societies and economies to adapt to the adverse effects and reduce the impacts of climate change.
UN Environment's work on climate finance is systematic and two-pronged. Through the Finance Initiative, UN Environment focuses on supporting private sector financial institutions including Banks, Investors and Insurers to understand and mitigate climate risks, seize the commercial opportunities from climate action, and ultimately take all necessary measures to fully align portfolios with the mitigation and adaptation objectives of the Paris Agreement. The Finance Initiative recently published a report highlighting a series of key recommendations to accelerate adaptation finance from the private sector. Launched in July 2019, “Driving Finance Today for the Climate Resilient Society of Tomorrow” aims to catalyze systemic changes to the finance sector and will provide important evidence to support the Global Commission on Adaptation’s Year of Action 2019-20.
Through our climate finance-related projects with governments, we focus on supporting developing countries to access climate finance (directly and through accredited entities) from the Green Climate Fund (GCF), the Global Environment Facility (GEF), and the Adaptation Fund (AF) as well as through other bilateral or multilateral public sources.
