Addressing climate resilience needs in fragile states is one of the biggest outstanding gaps in climate finance. However, recent research suggests it is also one of the biggest opportunities, including for addressing crucial conflict drivers. COP28 will bring together the major stakeholders needed to tackle this problem.
Following the Sustainable Development Goals Summit this past September, the U.N. published a guidance paper to identify pathways to achieving the SDGs by their target date of 2030. But if those goals are to be met, even partially, the U.N. must also rethink the political underpinnings of international development cooperation.
Popular protests are on the rise, and they are increasingly going global. Over the past five years, popular movements demonstrating against fiscal austerity and corruption have brought down governments—in democracies and authoritarian regimes alike—from Europe and Latin America to Africa and Asia. And with the advent of new communication technologies and media platforms, what happens anywhere can be seen everywhere.
Today’s violent and complex world has drawn many historical analogies, particularly with the 1950s and the start of the Cold War. While the current geopolitical landscape does not feature two blocs in the Cold War sense, we can distinguish two families of countries or “worlds,” geographically, but above all politically and culturally.
The international order is fraying, generating uncertainty about who will intervene to resolve persistent conflicts, and who will fund humanitarian responses to human-made and natural disasters. Meanwhile, emerging crises, proxy wars and multiple hot spots pose new risks, even as the nature of transnational terrorism is evolving.
The surge in investor demand for “green finance” is good news for the environment, representing a potential reservoir of urgently needed funds to stabilize the climate. But is green finance really the answer? Possibly, but not without substantial reform and regulation, starting with a clearer definition of what it is—and isn’t.