Delivered by Goksen Sahin from ICLEI and Toby Walker from Under2 Coalition
Thank you very much. My name is Goksen and I work at ICLEI which is the focal point of the LGMA Constituency. And I’m here with my colleague, Toby, from Under 2 Coalition and we would like to highlight some key points on behalf of the, LGMA Constituency. So the first thing is we heard from the the scene setter speech of the Women and Gender Constituency, the importance of public services to ensure an equitable and gender responsive transition and protecting the most vulnerable. So local and subnational governments play a key role in providing public services but also building resilient livelihoods and implementing Paris agreement in our states, regions, and cities.
So for the LGMA Constituency, it will be crucial that this COP delivers a new ambitious collective quantified goal on climate finance. We should start talking about trillions. It is key that the NCQG also enables just an equitable and well funded transition across all levels of governments through guaranteeing direct access for subnational governments. In this sense, we really want to urge all the parties to recognize the need to accelerate efforts to for to enhance access to adaptation finance specifically as a part of NCQG including for local and other subnational actors and the private sector with a focus on facilitating direct access for local and other subnational governments. I will conclude with kind of one final point and it will be quite important to phase out fossil fuel and environmental harmful subsidies to fully implement outcome of the 1st global stock date and direct these revenues to the NCQG especially to the sectors that lack climate finance such as adaptation and loss and damage.
To add to those remarks on behalf of the LGMA network, my name is Toby Walker from Climate Group, the Under 2 Coalition. And as we saw in the NCQG text there, it’s being called for an all government approach And for adequate implementation, local and other subnational governments must be involved in the conversation. They must be involved by ensuring they have direct access to new finance in connection to the reform of the global finance architecture and multi development banks. We’ve heard in the opening remarks that there is a need for blended for blended finance is not working at the speed needed right now and greater public finance is needed and needed at the layer of government closest to those that need it. Sub nationals are that layer of government that are operating closest to people on the front line of the climate crisis.
And we heard from the UNSG at the start that the money must be going to the people who are feeling it worse. Secondly, these governments must be included because they’re already part of the financial solution. They’re already contributing to the global climate finance that is being mobilized either indirectly or directly. And we saw this from Scotland before the loss and damage fund was even created where they pledged 2,000,000 to contribute to that firm to that fund. And also, we’ve seen it from Quebec and many other subnational governments in terms of their carbon tax and channelling those funds into the global climate finance goal.
