New Finance Goals and Political Realities: How to Deliver on Climate and Development

Countries have committed to ambitious new climate finance goals—but many are now cutting the aid budgets that underpin them, calling into question how climate and development objectives can realistically be met.

At COP29, countries agreed to mobilise $300 billion a year by 2035 as part of the “New Collective Quantified Goal” on Climate Finance within a wider goal of $1.3 trillion a year which also incorporates international private finance. But since then, we’ve entered a new political reality: the United States is withdrawing from the Paris Agreement, and other major providers of finance have signalled their international budgets will need to be reduced.

This event will see CGD experts bring together senior representatives from the World Bank—the world’s largest provider of climate finance—and the UK government, which is trying to remain at the forefront of the international climate agenda while managing severe aid cuts, to explore the difficult choices facing development agencies as they work to meet these goals.

Speakers:
• Valerie Hickey, Global Director for Climate Change, World Bank Group
• Debbie Palmer, Director Energy, Climate and Environment Department, UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO)
• Ian Mitchell, Co-Director (Europe) and Senior Policy Fellow, Center for Global Development