Earth Today | Baku Initiative champions attention to human development in global climate response
Published:Thursday | December 12, 2024 | 12:07 AM
INTERNATIONAL CLIMATE and environmental funds, including the Adaptation Fund and the Green Climate Fund, together with multilateral development banks and international organisations, have noted their commitment to “scaling up” age- and gender-responsive climate finance for investments in human development.
This includes attention to education, health, social protection, decent jobs, and skills development; and was reflected in their joint statement on ‘The Baku Initiative on Human Development for Climate Resilience’.
The statement was issued on November 18, during the global climate change conference (COP29) held in Baku, Azerbaijan.
Other parties to the statement include COP29, the International Organisation for Migration; the United Nation (UN) Development Programme; the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation; the International Labour Organisation; and the United Nations Children’s Fund.
They are in addition to the UN Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women, the World Health Organization (WHO), the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation, the Global Fund, the Asian Development Bank, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, and the Islamic Development Bank.
According to the group, their commitment is grounded in “the urgent need to address the complex challenges posed by climate change and its impacts on human development, and acknowledging the significance of a multisectoral approach in tackling these challenges”; and the recognition that “investments in human development not only build and enhance resilience to climate change, but also fuel solutions to tackle it”.
Against this background, they have also included among their objectives:
• Bridging global efforts on climate and human development for greater synergy, complementarity, and maximum impact;
• Strengthening dialogue at the intersection between climate policy and human development, including Nationally Determined Contributions and National Adaptation Plans; and
• Promoting human development as a key lever for building climate resilience.
The ‘Baku Initiative on Human Development for Climate Resilience’ is, they said, to address “intersectoral synergies and complementarities between greening education, health, social protection, decent jobs, and skills development to enhance climate resilience, with a special focus on workers at risk of losing their jobs, workers in the informal economy, women, children, youth, migrants, displaced people, and other vulnerable groups”.
The climate talks, meanwhile, ended on November 22 with small island developing states dissatisfied. They are among those most vulnerable to climate impacts – from extreme hurricanes and droughts to sea level rise and the associated risks to public health, food and water security, as well as national economies.
The Alliance of Small Island Developing States (AOSIS) now insists that developed countries must honour their obligations to tackling climate change.
“We must get serious about raising collective ambition, drastically cutting emissions, and advancing action on mitigation. On climate finance, the lack of ambition from developed countries has further eroded the faith of the developing world,” AOSIS said in the wake of the COP29.
AOSIS represents the interests of 39 small island and low-lying coastal nations in climate change and sustainable development negotiations.
“At COP29, the world’s most vulnerable countries were made to engage in a harrowing fight to enhance climate finance, in the hope of keeping the global goal of keeping 1.5 degrees Celsius alive. The celebration of this very basic goal adds insult to our injury,” the group added.
After two weeks of negotiations, the resulting agreement is one that failed to deliver the hoped-for US$1.3 trillion a year in climate financing for the developing world. Developed countries have agreed instead to help to secure finance flows to developing countries to the tune of some $300 billion a year by 2035.