LSE GLOBAL POLICY LAB
A renewed chance to address climate change and the ocean Torsten Thiele Senior Visiting Fellow of the Institute of Global Affairs at the School of Public Policy, LSE
The wholesale integration of climate, biodiversity and ocean issues into the global financial architecture to align with nature and sustainability is long overdue. Disruptions caused by COVID-19, along with increased awareness of both the climate and the biodiversity threat to the ocean and human livelihoods, must now urgently be translated into urgent effective action. 2021 provides the opportunity for this critical realignment, particularly as climate change is back on the agenda of all major governments.
international ocean and create conditions for sustainable marine development; • The Green Climate Fund and the International Development Finance Club have formed a strategic alliance to help realise the potential of public development banks in financing the green and climate-resilient transition; • The recent T20 Communique clearly identifies critical pathways for a circular economy and in proposal 24 calls on the G20 to protect, conserve, and restore biodiversity
We have been seeing a number of hopeful signs in recent weeks: • Major economies, governments, subnational actors and corporations have committed to net zero 2050 goals and are developing credible de-carbonization strategies; • UNFCCC COP 21 looks set to deliver a solid global implementation framework, with the U.S. likely to rejoin the Paris Agreement; • The EU, the UK and others are targeting their COVID recovery funding with a clear “greening vision”; • Regulators are clarifying common approaches to climate risk, with specific guidelines and a roadmap to mandatory disclosures for companies by the Task Force on Climate Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD); • The Federal Reserve, the world’s global central bank, is moving closer to joining the Network of Central Banks and Supervisors for Greening the Financial System (NGFS), which can help shape global financial markets’ behaviour; • The European taxonomy of environmentally sustainable economic activities – a set of technical screening criteria for economic activities that can make
The G20 countries are the key international group that can provide leadership in this area, with 85% of global GDP and some 80% of the global greenhouse gas emissions. By supporting the international UN climate process with complementary political, economic and technological ambition to rapidly decarbonise and reduce emissions to net zero by 2050, there is still a chance to halt global temperature increases. This is provided that the world’s nations fully take account of the climate-biodiversityocean nexus as they transition to circular and sustainable economies. Total infrastructure capital around the world is expected to double in the next 15 years, so the format through which investment takes place will have a profound influence on “global commons”, such as the climate and the ocean. The international financial institutions have a critical role to play in ensuring the quality and sustainability of that investment. Multilateral development banks are well positioned to crowd in the required private resources. They need to develop contingent public finance facilities, launch support operations and system-wide
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a substantial contribution to climate change mitigation or adaptation, while avoiding significant harm to the four other environmental objectives – provide a comprehensive framing to align investment strategies and capital markets to deliver sustainable finance; • The planned adoption of a post2020 global biodiversity framework by the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity in 2021, together with adequate resource mobilisation, can offer a pathway to more effective support towards key measures that seek to safeguard nature and the human livelihoods that depend on it; • Private sector actors are increasingly taking the lead on climate and biodiversity commitments; • The commitment by the negotiators to conclude a workable UN Agreement on Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction under United Nations Convention of the Law of the Sea in 2021 will deliver the opportunity to protect the
