MANILA –  As the global community will gather in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, for the COP27 climate conference, on 6th November, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) announced that it will launch several flagship initiatives at the key decision-making forum of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and address climate change and its impacts.

The ADB says COP27 comes at a critical juncture as Asia and the Pacific deals with the impacts of increasingly frequent and intense weather events caused by climate change and provides a chance for the global community to come together to decarbonize at scale and greatly expand concessional and grant resources to developing countries.

ADB will launch several flagship initiatives at COP27, including the Asia Pacific Water Resilience Initiative, which will promote resilient water management in the region, as well as the Blue Pacific Finance Hub, which aims to restore ocean health, build coastal resilience, and develop sustainable blue economies.

ADB will launch the Just Transition Support Platform to help strengthen ADB’s work in the just transition space, which seeks to ensure that the benefits of the shift to low-carbon, resilient economies are shared equally and no individual, community, or region is left behind.

ADB is also piloting an Innovative Finance Facility for Climate in Asia and Pacific (IFCAP), which will use guarantees and grant contributions from donor countries and philanthropies to leverage $4 for every $1. IFCAP will be launched next year to help provide much-needed investment for both climate change adaptation and mitigation.

Climate change is the critical issue of lifetime and the past 12 months has provided a stark reminder of the human impacts on climate especially in Asia and the Pacific. Historically devastating flooding in Pakistan, extreme drought in the People’s Republic of China, tropical cyclones in the Pacific Islands and typhoons in the Philippines have impacted hundreds of millions of poor, vulnerable people. The reality is that these kinds of weather events caused by climate change will increase in intensity and frequency. Therefore, COP outcomes are particularly important for meeting the goals of the Paris Agreement and the UNFCCC to keep global warming below 1.5ºC.

“We cannot avoid all the impacts of climate change, they are already happening, so we have to focus on building resilience of the most vulnerable communities,” said ADB Climate Envoy Warren Evans.

‘’COP27 will focus on scaling-up adaptation solutions and mobilizing and strengthening access to financing for adaptation. As Asia and the Pacific’s climate bank, ADB raised its ambition for climate change financing for 2019-2030 from $80 billion to $100 billion, of which $34 billion is marked for adaptation. Some recent examples of that commitment to adaptation include a $1.5 billion loan for Pakistan, under ADB’s Building Resilience with Active Countercyclical Expenditures (BRACE) Program, which includes help to promote climate change adaptation following this year’s devastating flooding, as well as $250 million to strengthen climate and disaster resilience in 22 dozen coastal towns in Bangladesh.''

COP27 is taking place at a time of unprecedented challenges worldwide. The global community must come together for a renewed global commitment in Egypt to decarbonize at scale and to greatly expand concessional and grant resources to developing countries which are suffering the most.

“It is time to step up and mobilize the kind of resources, with the kind of conditions, that allow countries to really use those resources to adapt to and become more resilient to climate change,” said Mr. Evans.