On the second day of the UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow, world leaders announced a pledge to save and restore our planet’s forests. With that deal came a long list of commitments from public and private sector actors to combat deforestation.
Climate change is a whole-economy problem. Tackling it will require looking at every financial decision through a climate lens. Does the decision result in greenhouse gas emissions or will it reduce them? Will it improve resilience to climatic shocks or worsen vulnerability? As countries move to implement the Paris Agreement on climate change, they need to know the answers to such questions.
As climate change impacts grow ever more apparent, it becomes more urgent to stop carbon flowing into the atmosphere and increase resilience to rising threats. Much will depend on how and where finance flows. Countries are enacting plans for adapting to and mitigating climate change, so they need to know what money is available and — crucially — if any flows of finance are working against their climate objectives.
