President Nana Akufo- Addo says it is imperative that the newly established Loss and Damage Fund must be free from the bureaucratic hurdles that have hindered speedy resource allocation of other climate funds.
He said the fund which was a crucial element to the collective response of countries to climate change must also be agile and responsive to needs of those affected by climate change.
“Our goal is to ensure that the fund is a dynamic and effective tool in addressing the immediate impact of climate change on vulnerable nations,” he said.
The President of Ghana made the remarks when the Climate Vulnerable Forum (CVF) and Vulnerable (V) 20 Finance Ministers held a stocktake of reforms in the international financial architecture to spur development-positive climate action.
This comes a day after the current and incoming chairs of the CVF endorsed and launched the COP28 finance declaration.
The finance declaration, endorsed by CVF members Ghana, Barbados, Kenya, Colombia, and Senegal, was to build on the V20 Accra-Marrakech Agenda, Bridgetown Initiative 2.0, and Nairobi Declaration, among other initiatives that highlighted the need for an equitable and effective global financial system in the context of climate change.
President Akufo-Addo, who is also the Chairman of CVF and V20, said that crucial to climate action was climate Justice, which required having a fit for purpose international financial architecture and international financing model that ensured that climate financing reached the most vulnerable.
“V20 economies have suffered immense losses amounting to 20 per cent of wealth amounting to $535 billion over the last two decades due to climate impact.
“We refuse to be defined by these losses, instead we chose to pave a path towards climate prosperity leveraging our economic and financial resilience strategies,” he said.
The event also covered the operational progress of the CVF-V20 and the pivotal role of V20 Climate Prosperity Plans (CPPs), national investment poweredt strategies that seek to maximize socio-economic outcomes for vulnerable countries by clean energy and resilient development.
Speaking on Friday at the COP28 finance summit President Akufo-Addo announced that Barbados will be the next CVF chair by mid-2024, and that former Maldives President and Founder of the Forum, Mohamed Nasheed has been appointed as the CVF’s first Secretary-General.
Source: GNA
