 Excellencies, distinguished guests, we will soon get started. I would please invite you to find a seat. Excellencies, honorable and distinguished guests, a very good afternoon to you all, for those that are here at the Hotel de Ville, the Paris Mayor's office, but also to those that are following us online, and welcome to this event on strengthening access to long-term financing for sustainable development in cities and globally. This event is co-organized by the Paris Mayor's office and the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network, SDSN, and this event is also affiliated to the Paris Summit for a new global financial pact that is starting tomorrow morning. So it's wonderful to see so many of you here in the room to discuss this topic, but also a couple of hundreds of people connected online. My name is Guillaume La Fortuna, I'm the Vice President of the SDSN and also the head of the Paris office, and I'll be the master of ceremony for today and moderating also one of the sessions. Let me start first by thanking the Paris Mayor's office and in particular Mayor Hidalgo for hosting us today in this beautiful Salle des Arcades. And let me also add that you can follow the event either in English or in French. For those of you that are in the rooms, there are headsets available at the entrance, and for those online, there's a YouTube link in English and one in French. So we will hear in a second welcoming remarks from Mayor Hidalgo, but also from Professor Sacks, the President of the SDSN, and this event is structured in two main parts. The first part is on priorities for financing SDGs in cities and region, and it will feature the launch of the SDSN Global Commission for Urban SDG Finance. This new commission is co-chair by Mayor Hidalgo, Professor Jeffrey Sacks and Mayor Eduardo Paiz from Rio de Janeiro, and we will hear also in a moment the keynote speech from Mayor Paiz. The second part of this event is on implementing the Global SDG Stimulus, and will feature the launch of the 2023 Sustainable Development Report, including the SDG Index. This is the eighth edition of this report, which tracks the performance of all UN member states on the Sustainable Development Goals and discusses also priorities for restoring and accelerating progress on the goals. So, without further ado, we will hear some welcoming remarks from the Mayor of Paris, Madame, and Hidalgo, Madame Hidalgo de Flores. Welcome, dear friends, and I want to speak in French, and bienvenue, bienvenue, à todos y a todos, en este Ayuntamiento de Paris. Dear Jeffrey Sacks, dear Professor, dear friend, dear Eduardo Paiz, Mayor of the city of Rio, who I'm happy to greet once again in the Hotel de Ville de Paris, dear friends, economists, men and women who are involved in the fight against climate change. I want to thank you all and tell you that I'm very pleased to be welcoming you in the Hotel de Paris. We were present in a great number many years ago. I could see the Mayor of Vancouver, Mauricio Rodas, who is Mayor of Quito. We met during the summit of a thousand mayors, a summit which was held before COP 21, which is the COP that led to the Paris Agreement. It is once again a great pleasure to see you all in the Paris City Hall. Our house is burning faster and brighter. We only have to open up our eyes and to read the news to see that there are forest fires raging on more notably in Canada. And this has consequences everywhere all around the globe and in your city, dear Geoffrey, in New York. And while this is going on, we are still waiting for radical changes to fight against the effects of climate change. We see tensions being played out over and over again within different foreign, international foreign. We are making difficult headways when it comes to SDGs, despite strong action from the Secretary General of the UN. Many people, men and women across the globe are sharing these messages and voices, voicing their concern and are trying to act. There is, we're in a state of emergency and many men and women are committed to change, but many would rather stick to the status quo. We need to mobilise the necessary mean, however it is usually slowed down by the worry of rich countries to not be able to face what is coming and what we are expecting. These rich countries do not completely accept this reality. They do not accept the fact that yes, in richer countries we have tapped into our resources and depleted them and our economic progression, our consumption have effects. Even today they have negative effects in poor countries and we cannot say to poor countries no, you will not be able to change and go through development because we have already used up all the resources available on our planet. We also know that these ideas and actions are also being slowed down by very powerful lobbies, the fossil fuel lobbies for example that does not hesitate to destabilise the economies and would rather focus on the short term and focus on depleting resources and this all leads to the destabilising of democracies. These players are feeding populism across the globe. Even in the world of fossil fuels there are companies and leaders that have understood that there is a world where fossil fuels exist, oil and they want to prepare for this world. There is international solidarity exist. Indeed the target of 100 billion euros for developing which was announced cop after cop is far too often pushed back but hopefully we will be able to meet this target in an announcement made about the mobilisation of these funds this is coming far too late. This also and these delays have consequences on waterways on biodiversity, on climate on democracies and on social systems and we still have a lot to do as well when it comes to loss in damage and financing essential services and the impact of inflation. Many countries and we know this are not able today or almost not able to service their debt. The UNDP programme was showing that in 2022 there was a backsliding in human development in 9 countries out of 10 on our planet and this led to a lowering of life expectancy and a rise in poverty. Is this really the path that we want to be on and we know who's paying the price it's the citizens of the south and this also leads to a deadly mistrust vis-à-vis the richer countries and this of course creates a perfect scenario for war in destabilisation We have also witnessed the sluggish negotiations of the phasing out of plastic there have been commitments made by Paris and other actors but these negotiations were indeed sluggish and there is truly a race for the bottom which blocks and destroys any type of ambition We have always advocated for cities to be better taken into consideration and this is important more so than ever. Why? Well we're not perfect in cities we have many challenges to face but we are at a democracy level at a coalition level we can garner different actors around us and we can together implement solutions we are not only focused on solutions we understand and we know the world context we think globally but act locally and we now need to think locally as well to act globally so that the emergency all good will has to be encouraged and supported in order to face these challenges of course cities must have a more direct massive access to public investment but also to public financing and to private financing as well We drive it towards this new economy, and here I'm quoting the words of Jacques Attali, drive it towards the life economy, which allows our economy to focus on the wellness and well-being of humanity rather than on its destruction. Only 9% of climate action financing is currently being allocated to cities, while cities are generating more than 70% of greenhouse gases. And this is why cities are tirelessly pushing for more ambitious goals and are making their voices heard. To think here, all of the very important city networks that exist, they all have different roles to play. There's Cité Gouvernement Juni, for example, and the Secretary General is present in the room. It is a global organization that has been advocating for many years for recognizing public authorities in world governance. And at the UN more specifically, I'm also here thinking about a network which I am presiding, which is the International Association of Francophone Mayors. I recognize many of my colleagues in the room, many of my colleagues in Africa, and I wanted to welcome them here and thank them. It is a very key network. It has very concrete action levers. We are pushing for more South-South cooperation and work in not only North-South cooperation and work. This is an organization that involves all the competencies of the mayors, and I'm very proud to be representing this network. I'm also here thinking about the C40, which gathers together most of the big metropolises around the world. I also have the honor of presiding this network, chairing this network. My predecessor was Eduardo Pache and my Bloomberg, and this network is also finding solutions and showing that big cities around the world can be this solutions well, and they can also consolidate new markets that are based on this new economy, this economy that takes into consideration climate and human well-being. I'm here also thinking about the GCOM, and I want to thank its secretary-general, who is present in the room. It gathers together 2,500 cities around the world, and it is a platform, an extraordinary platform that supports cities with expertise so that they can implement all these solutions. In Paris, we are involved in these different networks, and we have implemented these solutions. Indeed, for people who have not been in Paris in a while, we'll have seen the difference. Indeed, we have sped up our transformation in order to adapt and to face the future. Here, I'm thinking about big transformations that are very useful as well to lower air pollution. We have made changes when it comes to mobility. Indeed, we have banked on fundamental mobility and have moved towards active mobility. We have made great efforts, and we have been able to invest in public transport and this lowered by 40% traffic in the cities, and also lowered by 40% air pollution in the city. We also continue to plant trees to adapt ourselves, and I have also wanted to tap into a very useful motor, very useful lever. Indeed, I'm speaking here about the Olympic Games. The Olympic Games are, yes, stressful, but they also help us to speed up our transformation. We are cleaning up the Sen so that it becomes a river in which we can swim in, and when we are hearing about 40 degrees weathered every summer soon in Paris, while being able to swim in the Sen will become essential. As the Secretary General of the UN Antonio Guterres was said, it is in cities that the climate battle will be largely won or lost, and we cannot forget this because it is urgent. The time has come, we have to build new instruments, new tools, and new financial tools for financing so that we can speed up the environmental transition. Indeed, the environmental transition requires colossal means, and this is what the World Bank says, and here I'm quoting the World Bank and saying that urban infrastructure needs at global level are estimated at $5 trillion per year with an added cost of 20% to make these infrastructures low carbon and resilient to the impact of climate change. Yet, the financing of cities is not simply not meeting our needs, and it is even truer when it comes to the cities of the south. We have set it at the different cop for cities, and we will continue to do so. Indeed, on the African continent, we are expecting a demographic shock, and there will be 900 million new inhabitants in cities by 2050. Cities will be under pressure, and so cities will have to maintain essential services, such as housing, transport, water, sanitation, access to energy, food security, and to make sure that citizens have access to these services. We will have to build new infrastructure, yet far too often, cities of the south have had to assume new competencies without added means and without being able to rely on taxation. So in this conference, alongside Jeffrey Sachs and Edouard Doppage, we are making headways. We need to invent new tools, and we need to invent new tools that will complement the already existing tools, and that will allow cities to have access to more financing. The Bridgetown initiative states the following. When a government over which countries borrows over a period of 10 years at a rate of around 3%, a developing country will borrow at a rate of 11%, and some will even borrow at a rate of 20%. This is simply not acceptable. We cannot keep going with this system. Indeed, it is the ones who most need it that do not have access to loans, and we have to move forward alongside the entire financing system, the World Bank, the multilateral development banks as well. We have to understand that if we want to have great outcomes, we need to act faster and change the state of play. So it is true for cities of the south, but it is also true for the cities in the north. Not all cities have access to European programs or to money allocated in the framework of recovery plans. Indeed, there was a recovery plan that was adopted following the health crisis of the COVID-19, and cities were not able to tap into this recovery plan directly. They had to go through the state, even though the money allocated was directly targeting environmental transition, and at European level, it is still experimentation. But we are no longer in this experimentation phase. We have to change the scale. We have to strengthen our solutions, and we have already implemented them. We see that they work and they have to now be implemented at a greater scale. So this is an issue that we all share around the world. I believe in our capacities as cities, in order to be in the world of international finance, of our lives. I believe that scientists, cities, networks, climate scientists, I believe in our capacity together to be able to pave a way that will allow us to genuinely achieve the results that we want. Because, of course, the survival of humanity is at stake. I mean, the planet will survive without us. But I think the aim of the game for us, for our societies, is to allow humans to continue living in the safest, healthiest way, and in harmony with our environment. So this is really the rationale of this meeting, and there will be commission of the use of single-parliamented insurgents. It falls within this reasoning. I'd really like to thank Jeffrey Sachs, because he was the one behind, but actually at the front of this initiative, Jeffrey convinced us that we would be able to do this, and I believe that we can, because a lot of hard work is behind this. And there's a lot of work on how we can really design the new financial instruments, how we can create this vast, very expansive coalition, on the basis of what we're doing in our towns that can show states and governments that we're not trying to steal their leadership, that in fact, the reality on the ground is at a multiple levels. We need multilateralism at a multilateral level, but we also need multilateralism on the lower levels that are, of course, really faced with all of these changes. Levels that are trying with great determination to take on the challenges that we are facing, the chief amongst them, of course, and you know that should of course influence finance is facing climate change. So I wish you fruitful work. I think that actually in this building that had to be hosted, the 1000 MERS Summit allowed for what is happening today, but at the time we actually reached a Paris Agreement, an international agreement on time and action. And I think that hosting this commission in this town for its first large meeting I think in a way is a way of giving us hope and giving credibility to this initiative that we really need. Thank you. Thank you very much for those powerful and inspiring words. I'm not sure we can connect this with climate change of global warming, but we're aware that it's very hot in the room, so there is water available on the side if you need it. Without further ado, let me hand it over to Professor Jeffrey Sachs, the director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University and president of the SDSN. Professor Sachs will also make a few opening remarks. Mayor Idango, thank you for having us in your home and in this absolutely magnificent Hotel de Ville, which is very historic, very magnificent, replete with history and the perfect demonstration to us of sustainability. This building has been the center of Paris governance for 700 years and essentially this building is 500 years old with renovations along the way and many dramatic and wonderful and inspiring historical events. We are inspired by your leadership, which is why we are here. When you opened up the Hotel de Ville with your leadership for the initiative for a new financing arrangement for the world and for the world cities, everybody immediately said, yes, that is thanks to you and thanks to your wonderful partner in this, the mayor of Rio de Janeiro, Mayor Eduardo Paes, we're so grateful and also you can't imagine two more iconic and beautiful and historic cities to be leading this global effort, so it's tremendously exciting. We're here to talk about the sustainable development goals, which is really something new for the world. They're complicated, many interconnected ideas all around the notion of sustainable development, that the world should live in peace, in prosperity, with social justice and with environmental sustainability. You can state it in a sentence, but it's going to take us generations to achieve it because it requires a new kind of thinking, a new kind of governance, a new kind of metrics, new kinds of planning, new areas of expertise, new technologies. We're really into something new, and it's not simple. And we're in the seventh year of the particular initiative of the agenda 2030, the 17 sustainable development goals, and we're finding this is a homework assignment a little bit harder than it looked at the start. We're not achieving these goals right now, we're not on target, but I want to say we're learning a lot as a world about what we need to do and why the governments of the world, all 193 UN member states adopted these goals in September 2015. I travel all over the world almost nonstop speaking with governments and scholars and civil society about sustainable development and the SDGs, and the one thing I never hear about them is the question, well why are we trying? Everybody understands that something important, very important, is at stake in the world. Everybody, I think, is coming to understand this is not business as usual, this is not a simple assignment, this is not a simple tweak, this is not something that even fits within how our governments operate or how our political systems operate. Many politicians feel very uncomfortable about this agenda. It's much more complex than usual, it's much more interconnected, it's much more long term, there are very few quick wins in the social transformation that is needed, so this is not something that is unnatural I would say for how we have thought about politics or how politics is organized, but the idea that this is central for the well-being of our societies, for the safety of the world, I think is becoming more and more deeply understood. I've always said when I think about it that the sustainable development goals in a way are generations attempt to implement the universal declaration of human rights, that all people have the rights to a life of dignity. It's appropriate that we are in Paris to discuss this today because the universal declaration of human rights is the 20th century's attempt to implement the declaration of the rights of man, which came from Paris in 1789, and that was a breakthrough of a new world and a new vision in which everybody would be a citizen in which there would be liberty, equality, fraternity. Those ideas are still with us, now we would add sustainability because we have another challenge that is part of this, so it's very inspiring for me and very moving to be here to discuss these themes. We are going to have a chance to hear from many leaders about this, I'm going to have a chance to describe briefly what you have on your chair, the new sustainable development report for 2023, but I want to say right at the beginning we were given as we walked in a report of the Rio City government that Mayor Paisch put out in 2021. This is an executive summary, but Mayor, it's exactly what I hope for. It's a new way of thinking. A city plan to 2050 is not so usual, by the way, to think ahead 30 years and ask what can our city be and what are all of the challenges, technological challenges, social challenges, environmental challenges. How can we address them in three 10-year cycles of policymaking? This is not normal politics, it's a whole new way of thinking. It's a beautiful report and it's very important and I want every city in the world to take inspiration from it because this is the kind of thinking that will indeed change the world. So friends, we have a very interesting and important and exciting program together. I can tell you as we met this morning to discuss among the members of the new commission that you will have launched right now. Everybody said and Mayor Adago gave us the assignment. Not a new report, not more reading, although as an academic I always love a new report, but real results and real action. And so we have a one-year assignment to get this done because we want the Olympic athletes to be carrying around the flag of our new finance institution on the Olympic track next year. So that's our goal and we launched today. Thank you. Thank you so much, Jeff. And before we move indeed to the formal launch of this commission, we will hear a last keynote intervention from the Honorable Kerry's Simons, the Barbados Foreign Affairs Minister. Minister, the floor is yours. Thank you very much, Mr. Master of Ceremonies, Madam Mayor Adago. It is a pleasure to be here in France and I want to begin by thanking you for the wonderful hospitality and arrangements that have been extended, certainly to my delegation. It is a privilege, Professor Sachs, to be here with you and participating with you. I have read you incessantly, so you have been something of a hero of mine and I want to congratulate you, not only for the excellent work you've been doing at the University of Columbia, but with respect to this very fundamental issue of sustainable development for this planet. And of course I would want to recognize Mayor Pais as well for the work you've been doing too. Ladies and gentlemen, permit me just to single out my brothers and sisters. If I could speak only at this point as Foreign Minister Barbados, my brothers and sisters from the African continent. I do that for the very deliberate reason that we must not see this Bridgestone initiative and the efforts that are being made by Barbados as only an effort aimed at the difficulties being confronted by small island developing states. It transcends that and quite frankly, it encapsulates all of us in the developing southern part of the world and I think we have to speak and find common voice and common purpose as we interrogate these matters. It would be remiss of me, ladies and gentlemen, not to apologize for the absence of my Prime Minister, the Honourable Mia Amor Motley. She is a tad unwell at the moment and obviously this is a big, big occasion for her. She is part and parcel of the original intellectual architecture of this Bridgestone initiative and obviously she would want to be in Goodnick, the best of health tomorrow when the conference begins. Ladies and gentlemen, I want to say to you that and I use the word interrogate just now, if we are going to interrogate this issue of finding a satisfactory way of strengthening access to long-term development financing. It is very important at the start for us to recognize that the transition that we are contemplating has to be just. It has to be a transition that links the crisis in development with the crisis of climate and we must not ever make the mistake of trying to see these as two separate and distinct considerations that are confronting the planet today. In fact, I go further. I want to suggest to you that, and maybe I should not just suggest to you, I'll tell you frankly, Barbados today, this morning when we woke up, we learned that our island was under tropical storm watch. For those of you who are not from the Caribbean or in the hurricane belt, that simply means that there is a storm, a small fallow brewing not too far away. By midday that was, we were warned that there is a likelihood that it will become a hurricane. This is just a few hours later and that is the great rapidity of the development of these storms and the impact on it is as equally fundamental and breathtaking. In Dominica, another small island of the eastern Caribbean, only a few years ago, they were impacted by a category four or five hurricane and their entire GDP was set back by 225%. Over the course of a climatic experience that lasted only five hours. In the Bahamas, a similar thing happened. Island rendered completely uninhabitable, climatic event lasted maybe eight or so hours. So the point that I'm making is that our development trajectory is a small island state. Quite frankly, the development trajectory of those states which are in Africa and are seeing desertification, those states which are in Latin America and seeing deforestation, the development trajectory can be set back fundamentally with very distinct consequences. It is for that reason that the Bristol Initiative tries to direct the attention of the world to this issue of climate reduction disaster clauses and the climate reduction disaster clauses are really conceptualized to do a simple thing. To say that we can now or we will now recognize that those of us who are charged with the responsibility of directing the affairs of a state on a day-by-day basis, when confronted with an unplanned event like a hurricane, when confronted with unplanned disastrous consequences and fallout like the setting back of your GDP by multiple hundreds of percentage points, taking your country back from where it is today in 2023 to where it may have been in 2010 or 2012, that at the same time as you must find a way to be nimble and recover from that shock, you also still have to make sure that you feed your society. You also have to make sure that your children can be educated. You have to make sure that your country can provide adequate healthcare, that the sanitation services can function, that all the essentials of peace, order and good government can take place. And therefore what we invite the world to do is to accept that there will be a suspension of debt repayment obligations and that you set that back after a period of two years. You allow for that state which is facing this unexpected crisis, having reached the threshold at which the crisis is identified, perhaps a category one hurricane, that then you allow for the state to be able to focus on the reconstruction and have the elbow room, as my Prime Minister likes to say, and at the end of that period of debt obligation, you tack on the additional two years. That is the simple request that is made at Bridgestone. We invite the world to look at the fact that the tailoring of our financial structures have to be fit for purpose and that there's a necessity to recognize that all debt is not the same. If I'm borrowing money as a country in order to build schools, I'm invested in the future. If I'm going to borrow money, however, to finance profligacy and wastage and squandermenia, for example, having a bulky public sector and a necessarily huge public sector which is being padded for political short-term purposes, that's a different thing. But to reinvest in healthcare or reinvest in education, those are the developmental issues, but they can be very fundamentally challenged and this is where there's a broad intersection between climate and development. They can be very fundamentally challenged by the climactic issues that we are confronting. I give you the Barbados example once again. In my country, we now have an unprecedented experience where a sweet little island that new distinct rainy seasons and distinct seasons of sunshine now finds itself having prolonged periods of sunshine and very little rain. We are going through periods of drought in Barbados to the point that as I speak to you of the 11 parishes in my country, there are eight or nine of them that are distinctly short of rainfall and facing drought conditions. Added to that is the fact that we must move or repair 1600 kilometers of mains, water mains in the island, because when we got those water mains put down in Barbados, they were put down by our colonial, the colonizing country. I don't want to use the word master, the colonizing country, Great Britain. And the colonizing country had an empire. They could afford to spend money on 16,000 kilometers of mains in Barbados. Today, at today's cost, it would cost us roughly $2.5 million for every square kilometer of mains that we are replacing and you do the maths. We're running into multiple billions of dollars. But the fact of the matter is that if we don't correct those leaking mains, then the issue of water conservation, which is critical and becomes even more critical in the drought conditions that we're in when we can't afford to lose water as it is being transported to our houses and even more critical in the aftermath of the pandemic, then we must be in a position to correct that problem. But to correct that problem comes at great cost. And that is why I say to you that the opportunity to borrow, but to borrow in a manner in which you are tailoring your financial structures so that they are fit for certain specific purposes and that one size cap does not fit all becomes a very important consideration. I go further and I suggest to you that sustainable financing and the need to avoid excessive indebtedness is another real issue facing those of us in the South. And Mary Dalgo spoke to you just now about the Extract from the Bridgetown Initiative, which speaks quite poignantly to the difference in cost of capital when you are trying to do projects in the South and when you're trying to do a similar project in the North. And she is correct. We often find ourselves paying double digit costs as the interest rate on the loan has to be repaid. And in the South and in the North that may be a 2% or a 3% as opposed to a 14%, 12% which is fairly common in my part of the world. So that we therefore urge that consideration be given to a longer tenor of loans and of course lower cost associated with the loan. And that is very intricately linked as well to the question of return on investment because every investor wants to have a satisfactory return on his or her investment. But as we finance our way towards a green new world, we have to be mindful of the fact that many of the investments will be large and will be lumpy. I was previously Minister of Energy in Barbados. It would have been possible if we did not choose to democratize the energy product in Barbados and therefore make every householder give every householder an opportunity to own a renewable energy license and place solar photovoltaic on his or her roof. It would have been possible for us just to simply go out to sea and get a set of windmills at the cost of perhaps 20, 30 billion United States dollars, maybe a little more and satisfy the electrical requirements for the whole island. But then the question would be the return on investment for the investor. It is a large and lumpy investment and high cost of capital associated with the high premium risk of putting that type of wind farm or those wind farms out to sea in a hurricane belt environment would render the cost to the consumer so high and the risk to the investor equally high that it might make the investment almost untenable, which defeats the whole purpose. And it is to those types of grave and real considerations that the team from Barbados applied their minds and their hearts and came up with the Bridgestown initiative. Because these are some of the considerations which quite frankly perhaps can sometimes be taken for granted. But as usual the devil is always in the details. It is a reality that for those of us in the Caribbean, for those of us in the developing south in Africa, et cetera, there is a disparity in terms of accessing capital, in terms of the cost of capital. There is a major disparity in terms of the premium risks associated even by virtue of geography and therefore it makes it very difficult for green transformation to take place in the south at the same pace and in the same scope as it takes place in the north. And ladies and gentlemen I don't want to belabor the point but I want to say that there's also a need for us to have sustainability linked bonds and we think that that perhaps is the way in which future discussion should go. By sustainability linked bonds I am suggesting that maybe the time has come where we can have key performance indicators and we invite those people who make investments in the bond to demonstrate that they are doing by whatever the business activity is, that they are meeting certain sustainability targets, certain climate sustainability targets that encourage private capital and private enterprise generally to do the right thing in terms of transforming and contributing to this global journey of transformation. And perhaps if that type of approach can be taken then we bring a more holistic consideration to it. We carry the whole world along as one. We reduce the risk of people or countries being left behind and making the journey all the more difficult because of what really could be called a financial form of segregation on a matter which really cannot afford for segregation. There must be adaptation but the adaptation has to take place across the planet. I leave you with one example. My country as I just said is now under a hurricane watch. The reality is that if we were to come to face that hurricane striking Barbados or any other because this is the start of the hurricane season there will almost undoubtedly be substantial damage to the overhead wires and infrastructure. It would be the most wonderful thing in the world for us to be able to move all of that infrastructure underground. But to do that again would be a large and lumpy investment. Our utility is not publicly owned. In fact it's Canadian owned and the incentive to do that would be so much more rewarding if it was that they could say well here's a way of anchoring some of the costs by way of investing in bonds which have these performance indicators and obviously if we are going to take all of the utility infrastructure above ground underground then we are meeting targets that satisfy a happy outcome. It is that type of creativity I want to suggest to you that the world needs now and that the world needs to urgently embrace. So that we come to Paris hoping that we will be able to have not only the warm welcome given by you Mary Dalgo but that we will be able to have the type of constructive considerations and conversation that take us past the us and them dynamic that the world has for too long been wrapped up in and bring us to a point where we can now speak as one people in one planet with one voice on a common purpose of keeping ourselves alive and well into the distant future. Thank you. Wow thank you so much Honorable Minister Kerry Simons for sharing with us such a clear picture of the challenges faced by Barbados. It seems like double digits is the reality for many SIDS both in terms of the GDP drop when there's a major crisis like a pandemic but also when it comes to the interest rates. So thank you again for being here with us today and taking the time to address this audience. So we will now move to after those welcoming and keynote remarks to the first part of this event which is on financing the SDGs in cities and region and the launch of this SDSN global commission for urban SDG finance and it is my great pleasure to transfer the the moderation of this part of the event to the wonderful Jeanne Burge Jeanne is the Lawrence Nosdorf Professor of Urban Research and Education at the University of Pennsylvania and of course an internationally renowned expert on urban development. I think very clearly the agenda shifted a little bit so things will shift by 25 to 30 minutes but Jeanne please come over. Thank you very much and this is indeed the official launch of this commission which consists of all the city networks many mayors private sector individuals and many coalitions. You have heard two of the co-chairs of the commission Mayor Hidalgo and Professor Jeffrey Sacks and now let's hear the third Mayor Eduardo Pence. I wish I had spoken before the minister I mean it was so amazing his speech made me feel like going to Barbados. The late dear friend Mayor Hidalgo Professor Jeffrey Sacks I mean as we my dear friends Mayor's ears and ladies and gentlemen as we launched this SDSN global commission for urban SDG finance let us be inspired by the urgency of the task at hand. We held we had a meeting this morning chair by Mayor Hidalgo and it is important to understand that this commission that we are found in here today it will have one year ahead of us so we can deliver get things done and deliver not a report but the solution that we might find in this work ahead of us so we need to accelerate funding and action to meet the 17 SDGs and to do so cities and countries ought to overcome both old and new fiscal and financial constraints. The instruments and funds to overcome global and local maladies caused by a perfect storm are simply not yet in place as we heard today. The global pandemic the war in Europe and other macro disruptions such as the possible effects of artificial intelligence on markets and supply chains are adding up to historical social gaps. Racism poverty hunger and the overall lack of resilient infrastructure in areas as basic as sanitation I mean I come from a country that's still addressing this issue as many developing or underdeveloped countries so how can local governments from Jakarta to Rio Delhi to Johannesburg Shanghai to Buenos Aires bridge the financial gap that separates us from cities in the developed world well the above mentioned cities from form a diverse cohort of humanity what do they have in common these are all major cities from G20 countries and home to millions of wealth and poor people headquarters of big and small national and international business and financial institutions alongside New York London and the beautiful second most beautiful city in the world which is Paris three of the number one so I have to say that we need to push national governments and multilateral institutions in the vein of the bridge down agenda towards a new global financial pact more than 30 years after Rio 92 it is time for us to face an unsettling fact when it comes to sustainability agenda funding and financial services have not evolved at the same pace as scientific knowledge and public evidences awareness let us all remember some old lessons from political economy and history development means more than the trending lexicon of esg our efforts to adapt cities and make and especially greenwash our efforts to adapt cities and make them fairer while mitigating GE emissions urgently need more national and international public and private funds the fulfillment of national nationally determined contributions that keep the Paris agreement alive depend on well funded greener and more resilient cities these ambitions cannot be realized only through small grants sporadic technical assistance aid and relief we need substantial and swift financing with global funds reaching local governments directly cities account for over 70 percent of global co2 emissions most of which come from industrial and motorized transport systems that use up use up huge quantities of fossil fuels and rely on far-flowing infrastructure obviously all of them goes constructed with carbon-intensive materials clearly staying below the 1.5 degree centigrade threshold means massive decarbonization of cities and this will require investments in low carbon energy and transport systems programs to reduce urban sprawl and nature-based solutions for urban cooling and disaster risk risk management so i mean i was looking at hearing the minister of barbado talking about the hurricane that they're going to face there i mean it's pretty much the same like i'd never travel uh dear friend it all go on summertime in real never if you invite me to come to paris between november and april i don't come i will not come because i cannot leave my city because it's everyday there's a danger of a big rain and uh the the results and this is uh this is getting worse each year i mean my third term and this is only getting worse so secretary general gutterres words in 2019 echo today cities aware the climate battle will largely be won or lost this is something that we need to pay attention real my city is a global city of almost seven million people larger than many nations we have a structure agenda and project and projects to effectively implement the sdgs and yet there isn't nearly enough international financing to adequately address all of our challenges one can only begin to grasp the situation of smaller poorer and less structured cities and countries it's incumbent upon us to help reinventing the global financial architecture and adopt a systematic approach to breach the sdg financial gaps cities must have a clear and loud voice in this process south or north big or small or small you can count on real to achieve that as the natural capital of brazil we are optimists about the return of president lula most of that is gone this is good news i'm waiting for thank you i saw that mayor dalgot was you know trying to get rid of her book to give lula hands so that's why i waited so uh we are we are very uh uh optimist about the return of president lula who champions the sustainable development agenda and necessary structural reforms both at home and abroad once again i must salute the role of this commission which i'm honored co-chairing with professor sacks and made our goal in pursuing pursuing this shared objective but let's not not forget as i said before actions speak louder than words it is essential that we synchronize our efforts and that's why we speak about one year agenda because we have the international upcoming summits the cope 28 in dubai the g20 in india the summit of the future in new york and all the way towards the g20 in real as we said before so these milestones provide us opportunities that we must seize let's not waste them so i express once again my deepest gratitude to mayor dalgo professor sacks and all the same participants for their dedication and passion in my heart i wish the discussions here today bear many fruits to all of us together let us have the way for a brighter more sustainable future one where cities become beacon of hope and examples of sustainable development thank you very much what a beautiful inspiring speech to get the commission going we have a short video from one of our members who could not be here it's mr robert bergay mom bae minister the governor district of abitazan in kotoa la limitation des emprunt des pays pour the video will not be interpreted the interpreters apologize en dessous de ses 20% du pay b voir moins conduit à maintenir la pauvreté plutôt qu'à soutenir un développement durable il faut encourager les emprunts à long term se faisant il aurait intérêt à mobiliser le partenariat actif les fonds des investissements et les fonds souverain ainsi que les fonds central dans un mécanisme alchimique où qu'elles sont appelées les spécialistes financement du développement le mode de financement préconisé si devant devait promettre la réalisation dans les villes et régions de communautés respectueuses de l'environnement socialement inclusive et économiquement liable ainsi par l'économie suivi on pourrait mettre en application le principe de cinq et réduire réutiliser recycler récupérer repenser on pourrait ainsi dans un schéma beaucoup plus simplifié passer de la droite au cercle pour préserver l'environnement et viser plus judicieusement le développement durable il faut soutenir l'action du fmdv qui a lancé en octobre dernier à bidon sa platform collaboratrice finance your cities qui vise à soutenir la mise en place des stratégies nationales du financement de l'urbanisation les villes et les régions constituent une opportunité d'investissement autour de quels il faut reformer l'architecture mondial du financement de l'urbanisation formation de nos sociétés et la réorientation de nos richesses vers un avenir durable et résilient pour être concret lors de la prochaine cop 28 le fmdv lancera avec une ligue de ministres et de lui africain champion la urbaine opportunité fast forward initiative initiative d'accélération pour l'opportunité hirvaine thank you minister for that great reminder to remember every geography in the world i'm going to call up our panelists right now samé wabbe who is the regional director of sustainable development in europe and central asia at the world bank maria del pilar cardillo gonzalo who's director of development cooperation at oecd bella tonga noni u.s. director of climate policy initiative at the city climate nance alliance mr. hyome who made for mario mayor of barranquilla and maricia wrote us fellow at the university of pennsylvania and former mayor of kiko and i see we're missing one chair so we'll play musical chairs as far as that goes the panel is going to address the question is that the commission will be addressing and they are as follows how to transform the global financial institutions framework to allow and encourage urban sdg finance and i'm emphasizing the urban and city as we go through this because that's our focus how to reform existing or craft innovative financial mechanisms to increase urban sdg finance how to de-risk capital for direct investment in cities how can international and national reforms allow cities direct access to capital market and how to improve the imbalance in mitigation and adaptation in cities remember it's cities and urban that we want to put the focus on today and we'll start first with summit thank you very much pleasure for me to be here so i wanted to share a little bit some of the thinking within the world bank group on increasing access to finance for the sdgs and specifically for the climate challenge for cities and sub-national governments i mean when we look at the magnitude of the challenge and mary dalgo spoke about the scale of the financing gap it is clear that a tremendous amount of financing is needed and that financing is not going to be available solely or anywhere near the magnitude for within the international finance institution so we really need a different way of doing things and the situation got even more complicated after covid because it provided the first very serious setback in terms of development progress in the past three decades it was the first reversal in poverty alleviation so if we are really going to scale up finance we need to do three different things one is basically enabling access to finance where there is no finance so that would be basically the large majority of cities in the developing world we know that of the 500 largest cities we work with at the world bank only five hundred only 18 percent of those 500 are credit worthy meaning they can borrow either on domestic or international capital markets in fact the large majority on domestic capital markets in the large countries and that's 13 of them and that's it and then only 32 cities or 6 percent can borrow on international capital markets so in order to get there we really need to help cities increase their municipal finances especially the own source revenues so we know for instance that property taxes the yield in terms of property taxes in the countries that are low and middle income basically is about 0.3 to 0.6 percent of GDP which is about a quarter of what OECD countries collect in terms of the current property taxes so without having access to revenues you know cities will not be able to progress towards having if you will the ability to service that and so we need to start with building those basics those basics also include asset management includes rationalizing expenditures include looking at their debt and restructuring that where it's unaffordable and when you add these up I mean these are requirements to be able to access finance and it's totally non glamorous work it has to be done in order to be able to access finance and then we want to go from there towards accessing finance at scale to be able to respond to the ambitions of the SDGs and the needed climate action and for that you need quite a bit of concessional funding that could reduce and basically bring down or buy down the interest of some of the regular development projects in order to make it more attractive and especially if you want to invest in either global public goods or requirements that are very hard to monetize like investing in adaptation so that is really critical to be able to have access to such concessional finance and then in order to have that type of funding and be able to do it at scale and focus on such key requirements we need also innovative finance and that's one of the main reasons we're here is to look at what type of instruments for instance guarantees that could de-risk private investment in urban infrastructure where it's needed because as I mentioned the funding that's available by the IFIs by governments is limited but at the same time as we were discussing this morning with the commission there's lots of funding that is being collected by national government you know on behalf of municipalities and that's you know in the form of taxation etc so being able to structure the finance flows from central government to local government for this revenue sharing basically the intergovernmental fiscal transfer systems that becomes really critical because that even compared to on-source revenues it is the larger pot so you need a combination of building the foundations the basics structuring the intergovernmental fiscal transfer systems to make them more reliable predictable but also with incentives to performance so that municipalities have an incentive to access more funds by you know achieving targets the policy targets that are established and then bringing the concessional finance and the the instruments like guarantees etc that could crowd in private investment lastly what projects you know because I mean you know we need also to start looking at how do we prioritize investments and how do we pick the right investment so for instance we know that investments like nature-based solutions you know wetlands parks etc are critical both as carbon sinks both for the livability objectives but also because they are critical flood mitigation interventions and therefore they're important for mitigation and adaptation and they don't cost much if you look at you know our host city you know the city of Paris I mean that amazing transformation in terms of mobility in terms of you know the bike lanes in terms of you know the sidewalks etc and these are interventions that have a transformational impact on a city that make it more accessible etc but that not necessarily I mean there's different ways of spending much more money without resolving the mobility so I think figuring out what types of projects becomes also really important and I'll stop here thank you thank you very much Samai you summarized this morning these talk around three words flow scale and doing the right thing so remember that everyone flow scale doing the right thing so let's now turn to Maria da Pilar Gariba so thank you very much and thank you also to Majorina Elegra and of course to the Global Commission for this opportunity to share what the OECD is actually doing on financing STGs and and cities and regions we come from from a moment of overlapping crisis while we need to deliver more and while we need to accelerate our accomplishments in terms of STGs and at the same time invest more in terms of our green and energy and the more resilient and inclusive economy so this is very very complex some of our developing countries face a severe physical challenges and with record downgrades of their sovereign credit ratings and higher borrowing costs and intensified risks of debt distress while the projection tells us that that those will remain below 20 before pre-COVID forecasts at this particular origin time cities are is where most of our 55 percent of the population will live and it is also where 75 of the economic activity will take place by 2050 so of course financing needs of cities for low emissions and climate resilient infrastructure are substantial estimated to be between 1.8 and 2.4 trillion per year prior to the crisis and now it's a lot more because of the step back but then how do we remedy this financial current and prioritized STG investments in cities and regions let me turn to our basics first and I have to talk about this because it's our development cooperation so ODA is continues to be a resilient source of external finance for developing countries even in times of crisis in 2021 at least 7% of all of the sources of ODA and others private funding to mobilize through official channels by a total official support for a sustainable development tool accounted or were associated with one of the STG's targets of STG 11 which is the one referring to cities and communities and it went up for five percent in 2009 to 2011 but local and regional governments can and should play a key role in addressing this financial gap after all they're responsible for 55 percent of total public investment in in OECD countries and 69 percent of climate significant public investment the work of the world observatories of national government finance and investment which is a joint endeavor by the OECD and the united cities and local governments also shows that subnational governments accounted for 40 percent of public investment globally in 2020 it is estimated that 65 percent of the 169 targets in the STG's cannot be achieved without the engagement of subnational levels this is why the OECD has been looking and learning at the role of city to city origin to region development corporation through our work on what we call decentralized development corporation ODA channeled through and provided by cities and regions grew by 33 percent since the adoption of the 2030 agenda in 2015 a 6 percent increase in every year reaching up to 3 billion euros or 3.6 percent of bilateral ODA in 2021 decentralized development corporation has an immense potential for advancing STG's in cities and regions yet it is largely overlooked and the financial needs of cities and regions are estimated at trillions let me highlight just three messages from our recent work on the decentralized development corporation the first one is that we need to maximize the impact of the decentralized development corporation actions and financing cities and regions we should focus on partnerships on those areas where we have developed unique skills and knowledge and this is where we can actually make the difference for instance in the Basque country in Spain for example has made gender equality a key selection of criterion for its development decentralized development corporation projects building on its strong record on women's representation following up to the adoption of the Basque country act for equity between women and men it because of that it allocates 20 percent of funds to actions to prioritize female empowerment and 10 percent to initiatives that include local feminist organizations second the right legal and institutional frameworks and incentives set up at the national level can really unblock and enhance subnational partnerships and financing for example in France where the so-called 2005 Odan Santini law has removed legal barriers for subnational governments and water agencies allowing them to dedicate up to one percent of their revenues to development decentralized development corporation activities promoting access to clean drinking water and sanitation third because aid is public money it is important that governments strengthen their monitoring and evaluations of this DDC in order to increase accountability and transparency and learn lessons from what works and what doesn't the Flemish region of Belgium for instance so it meets its developed decentralized development corporation programs to external auditors undertakes midterm reviews and makes its reports available in a single database in order to guide follow-up actions yet such examples are still too few evaluations often assess inputs rather than impact our joint collaboration with the European Commission of INPA aims to address these gaps it provides a systematic monitoring evaluation framework that could better guide DDC policies and actions later today our development assistance committee will meet as part of the Paris summit to discuss this new multi-pronged mobilization agenda which focuses on domestic resource mobilization as well as private sector and finance mobilization that should benefit cities and regions in finance and SDGs this agenda also has a quality of intervention for instance we develop a guidance for donors to support enhanced qualities for direct investment which can support regions and cities for more quality investment that they receive that are economically socially and environmentally feasible it is important to note that global assets on their management have kept growing at a pace where cities totaling close to 500 trillion euros less than 1% of this assets would be enough to fill today's SDG financing gap the problem is one of distribution distributing assets and aligning them to SDGs OACD work suggests that while the upfront cost of investment in green finance could be up for 33% higher than conventional energy infrastructure investment the strong positive impact of green investment on GDP more than offset the initial height cost that provides a positive return of countries does an alignment of cities and regions budgets with SDGs with accelerated investment in green infrastructure should increase that revenues and the sustainability of their debt this should also be reflected in better credit ratings let me conclude in 10 seconds with three actions we must advocate for better representation of cities and regions in clear global debates on financing for development to ensure that solutions are specifically tailored to their needs and that decentralized development cooperation is further promoted we need to tailor the mobilization agenda to the cities and regions specific needs including supporters of national entities for access to finance domestic resource and private mobilization and we must also increase transparency and better regulate sustainable finance to ensure that it is directed to cities and regions making progress on the SDGs including a revision of credit ratings and a fight against SDG washing thank you very much thank you very much you've given us an agenda and we thank OECD for the wonderful research that you do we'll support the work of the commission including these numbers on ODA is given to nations not necessarily cities but nations and the guest cities eventually and the need for decentralization and enabling legislation so let us turn now to Bella Tonga-Noji from CCFLA Bella thank you so much professor Birch this summit has the purpose to build a new pact that offers a level playing field shares the burden of climate change and builds prosperity and security and for that to effectively happen we need cities and urban areas at the core of the debate there are 80% of global GDP 70% of emissions and they're not receiving anywhere near the financing they need to be and that's especially true for developing country cities I think the the phrase that the Barbados minister just spoke a financial form of segregation hit me so hard perhaps because I'm an American that hits extremely hard but I think that this is truly the civil rights struggle of this generation and so I just want to congratulate those behind and in front of the commission for this effort for putting cities so firmly on the agenda of the summit and really taking this opportunity to drive a step change in finance that is flowing towards cities for sustainable development this is a hugely important commission and really again want to congratulate the team first so I work for something called the city's climate finance leadership alliance it's a bit of a mouthful but what we do we are a stakeholder coalition multi-level multi-sectoral of city climate finance leaders so city networks financial institutions public sector organizations research organizations and what we're trying to do is to mobilize city level climate finance action at scale and we do that a lot through the analytical and research work that we that we provide so what we're doing in the context of the global financial architecture and these discussions around reforms is really looking at how can we reform the to provide analytical insights on how multilateral development banks and international financial institutions currently provide urban finance and urban climate finance and what is needed to scale that up so we're just starting out this work and I think we're really looking forward to this collaboration with the commission as well we're also collaborating very closely with c40 and the global covenant of mayors on this work and what we want to do is to really set out the case to consider what it could look like the evidence base for really expanding development finance flowing for urban development and climate finance flowing for cities so we're grouping it into three buckets we're an analytical organization we love frameworks so the first bucket is what we're calling changes to strategies mandates and business models that's really how development banks both develop their own integrated clear strategies for urban financing and urban climate and sustainable development strategies and how they also in turn integrate that into the strategies that they work with with their country clients who are developing long-term or four to five year country strategies and not always including urban in those strategies so that's one the second is around supportive financial instruments and here we're really trying to show the kinds of risk-sharing mechanisms that can be that need to be scaled up and how concessional finance can be used most effectively and we're looking through a few different projects at things like guarantee mechanisms how can those be done more effectively and scaled up significantly where they are generally underutilized currently we're looking at currency risk and how you deal with that which is a huge issue in developing countries we're looking at pre-development funding how do you fund the earliest stage of infrastructure projects it's the risk it's a small ish amount of funding but it's the riskiest stage of projects and very hard to get investment at that stage and we're also looking at the incentives that that are present in multilateral financial institutions and how those could be changed to further catalyze and mobilize private investment so that's the second bucket and then the third and final bucket is around national policies and how they can how they can improve the enabling environment for urban climate finance so 90 percent of emissions in cities can be reduced with existing technologies and practices but only about a third can be done with can be done with decisions taken by cities alone so cities and national governments have to work together to drive more investment in urban climate finance but probably not news to all of you they don't always work well together and they don't there's a lot that can be improved so things like national level policy reform aimed at strengthening municipal fiscal autonomy and helping cities themselves and Salma mentioned this as well really helping cities themselves increase their credit worthiness so that they can accept or that they can raise money both through tax revenue as well as on capital markets so there's a lot of work to do we are really excited to work with all of you in this room and looking forward to further discussions so thank you so much thank you and you are hitting all the things that we are going to be addressing in the next year and we're glad you're doing it because we've got to get our socks pulled up and get going on this so let us hear now from Mayor Morejo about IKEA okay so I think um what is Baranguilla it's a 1.4 million people city in the northern coast of Colombia just had its worst winter in the history of its of its creation and 10 years ago we had had to date the worst the worst winter at that time we weren't prepared 10 years ago um and we had a lot of of of damages to people's houses to people's lives to people's livelihoods and to the environment 10 years after we had the worst winter in our lives but 10 times less damages why because we were able to adapt we were able to build the infrastructure needed against for example flooding from our Magdalena river we were able to recuperate start recuperating our mangrove forests along the coastal area we were able to build infrastructure that prevented landslides so we're not done yet but we were we were able to do it and we were able to do it because we were able to get financing from the proper structures and just to add to that 12 years ago or 14 years ago we had twice the poverty rate that we have now and we were the most unequal city of the principal cities of Colombia now we are the most or sorry the least unequal city of the principal cities of Colombia and we have just managed to look at a couple of key indicators such as for example in a region where two out of ten two out of ten children do not read according to their level or reading age level seven out of ten according to a world bank assessment the egg that we just made are reading at their level so seven out of ten so what we're seeing is when you give cities the opportunity to invest wisely things can and do happen miraculously but we've done this how and and I just want to point out a few things first we've been able to use the local commercial banking sector but as you will see in most of Latin America commercial banking sectors in Latin America and especially in Colombia are very very centralized or they're practically oligopolies there are five vp's of credit that manage more than 85 or 80% of all commercial lending in Colombia and they're also the owners of the clearing houses or the investment banks that will buy your bonds therefore you got to be in good with these five guys or these five girls or these five people because if not they're not going to loan you money secondly if you want to go to outside institutions you have to have the okay of the national government and that's a bureaucratic nightmare secondly or thirdly you have to get to the international market and you have to find a multilateral bank or an international bank that will loan to you the money that you need in the terms that you need because what happens for example i'm a four-year mayor when i got there i had i had ideas when i got the when i got my loan approved from for example the idb um 140 million dollars sovereign backed guaranteed and when i got there i was already building all these projects so i told me well you need to start again i'm like i can't start again so i need for you to give me a budget based results driven loan or i won't be able to take that money and i will be in trouble because i need that money at a low rate and they said we've never done that but they did it and hopefully in a few days we'll get the first disbursement of funds then or before that we worked with a bank very near to a lot of your hearts which is the fd the french development agency which has just done a wonderful job with us they've done 140 million euro package of loans in local currency not sovereign backed and results driven therefore it's not about a single project it's about doing or or making sure that we're heading in the right direction and that has been a game changer for barranquilla and for a lot of other places in colombia we started a small group of cities in latin america called the network of the latin american and caribbean network of biodiversity or nature positive cities as we like to call them now or you guys like to call them now and what we found is that we have common problems and common goals and what we're trying to do is say first if we were able to take a lot of the grants and subsidies that are given to cities like ours and use them to guarantee a non-sovered bank guarantee fund and for example we were to take a portion of the money that we have to repay to these institutions to keep funding that guarantee fund then we could keep growing and start giving more money to medium and smaller sized cities secondly we have power of repayment what we don't have is access to good credits thirdly our issues are more on restoration adaptation and reclamation and not on co2 reduction so stop measuring us on things that we are not guilty of we only for example in colombia emit 1.6 tons of co2 per year per capita we are 0.06 percent of the problem so what is our duty our duty is making sure that 53 percent of our territory which is protected areas rainforest wetlands and rivers and oceans doesn't get depleted and the forest measure us on that and help us use our money to reclaim and I guess protect our land so in a sense there is a way and just to give you a final a final tidbit of information when we started in 2008 I've been working in the government for 16 years um only been the mayor since 2020 but when we started our budget was 150 million dollars our budget today is a billion dollars give or take seven times more or less is the growth that we've had in the last couple years what have we done we've made good tax collection we've convinced people to trust government and to pay their taxes and what they see is that we are reclaiming territory we are giving them quality of life we are reducing poverty and therefore we're getting positive credit ratings from the banks and we're getting the loans that we need and we're getting the financial institutions to help us and that is why we've been working with CAF the Latin American and Caribbean Development Bank on trying to build a local solution for other cities it's creating a revolving letter of credit through an investment bank that will fund very quickly the most important goals of a city and then when we can accumulate 50 to 100 million dollars of these loans then we can offload them into the financial sector when they have been vetted when they have been constructed and when the construction risk and corruption risks and all these have been reduced then we offloaded into the market we've been working on that and I think that could be a halfway point or a starting point for this lofty ambitious and necessary goal of financing the the green new deal that this world needs so thank you thank you that shows what leadership planning and strategy can do for a wonderful wonderful city and to end this up Mauricio wrote us this has been his baby thinking about this he was mayor of pito he dealt with trying to get local finance and he's going to end our panel Mauricio and most importantly I co-teach a course with genie at UPenn so that's that's one of my biggest privileges thank you genie it is really a pleasure to be here it's very it's very exciting to see this finally happening we've been working on this for a long time and really to see this commission being launched is very very promising I think because it addresses or it intends to address many of the challenges that many of you have already mentioned we all know that it is in cities where the battle against climate change will be defined we all know that more than 70 percent of co2 emissions are taking place in cities so cities are crucial in the battle against climate change now cities need lots of money to do what they need to do to be effective players in the battle against climate change Mayor Hidalgo mentioned five trillion dollars per year needed to transform urban infrastructure into a climate resilient one and obviously it is impossible for cities to access that level of resources if we are facing an international financial architecture that was designed for countries not for cities it was designed in the 40s under Bretton Woods when the world wasn't nearly as urbanized as it is today we live in a different reality and we must act accordingly because the current financial architecture it is simply not fit for purpose anymore we must make it more cities friendly and that is why we decided to launch this commission and the idea is to address I would say five key questions and to come up with solutions to these five key challenges so the first one has to do with how to reform the international financial architecture through bold and disruptive ideas we need to be bold and disruptive that's why for example one of the ideas that will be explored through the commission is the setting up of a green cities development bank a green city development bank that can become a highly urban specialized financial institution that among other things would not only provide concessional grants to cities provide technical assistance but also come up with a robust pipeline of projects to attract private investment we have talked about the importance of attracting more private investment into cities so this is the kind of activities that the bank can undertake providing direct financial facilities for cities of course as well a second important challenge that the commission will be exploring is how to be innovative mayor Pumarejo just mentioned a very interesting example of the kind of things that we can do if we think outside of the box to come up with innovative financial mechanisms for cities there's a lot we can still do on this regard the third point has to do with how to promote the kind of international and national regulatory reforms that cities need to increase their access to finance at the national level for example there's a lot to do around 40 percent of countries in the world have their cities being banned from international borrowing in the other 60 percent or in most countries of the other 60 percent cities need a national government's guarantee to access to finance and we all know that very frequently those guarantees are not provided because of political rivalries between the national and the local government if this is something that I personally experienced as mayor of Quito so I know how suffering it can be now I think it is scary to think that because of politics cities cannot have access to the necessary resources to tackle one of the biggest threats of that humanity is facing right now which is climate change that is unresponsible and that's why I think we must not only think about it but act effectively to promote reforms that would avoid these kinds of obstacles to cities for accessing climate finance the fourth point has to do with the risk in capital and Sami mentioned this this morning it is a fundamental a crucial aspect if we want to increase the level of private investment into cities there's a lot to do in that field and finally the commission will explore mechanisms to improve the current imbalance there is between mitigation and adaptation finance only nine percent of total climate finance goes to adaptation we must change that and the idea is to explore different ways in which we can do it we have as you can see many important challenges to address it is not going to be easy work but we are really proud about the kind of people that we have gathered in this commission we have the great mayors from around the world who are already doing extraordinary work on addressing climate change and that have been thinking about how to address climate finance challenges we have finance experts we have representatives from the major city networks we have academics thinkers so we are really optimistic about the kind of outcomes that will come from the commission and we will be very happy to report to you all how those outcomes are being delivered thank you so much and as mayor plays said there should be a defining moment in Rio so stay tuned and we have heard from a marvelous group of panelists who are representative of this commission with the brilliant ideas that he put forward the amount of resources they have we hope to speak of one voice to show the power of cities and the needs the cities have so thank you let's have a hand for the panel and there'll be a 10 minute break and then please come back for a very exciting panel that's coming next which is the launch of the 2023 sustainable development report and there's some super speakers there too ladies and gentlemen we'll be restarting so I would please invite you to go back to your seats great so welcome back and welcome to this second and last part of this event we're moving up one layer from the local now to the national and global level so we'll be hearing from distinguished speakers about major priorities to scale up but also align global financing flows to achieve the SDGs and the objectives of the Paris climate agreement this session also features the official launch of the sustainable development report 2023 this is the eighth edition of this report that tracks the performance of all 193 UN member states on this on the SDGs and it is actually right now available online and the SDSN is also launching today at the midpoint on the agenda 2030 a new flagship project the SDG transformation center the next generation of analytics instruments and data to support long-term SDG pathways and investment frameworks so before we move to the panel we will have a number of keynote interventions and we will get started with his Excellency Guiluando Mboyo, Minister of State, Minister of Territorial Development from the Democratic Republic of Congo. Minister, the floor is yours. Thank you very much, thank you for giving me the floor. Before beginning, I wanted to apologize to Jeffrey Sachs, indeed his Excellency, our President, was invited to this conference but unfortunately he was not able to travel to Paris and this is why I am here to represent him and our Prime Minister will be at the summit tomorrow. I also want to thank Professor Jeffrey Sachs for inviting us and inviting the Minister of Territorial Development so that we can explain in a concrete way the innovative mechanisms for financing within our ministers. Indeed, we have benefited from the help of the French from the AFD difficulties that are linked to financing SDGs in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Ladies and gentlemen, dear guests, it is an honor for me to be speaking before you today and to talk about the internal challenges in terms of financing in our country, the Democratic Republic of Congo and most notably urban planning, territorial planning and also key investments and key priorities in the different territories of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Here I will be speaking about the needs of these different territories to reach the goals of the 2030 agenda or the 2063 agenda of the African Union. I want to also use this opportunity to congratulate the SDSN under the leadership of Jeffrey Sachs for the launch of the new World Commission for the financing of SDGs, for the urban financing of SDGs and also congratulate them for the publication of the Sustainable Development Report 2023. Ladies and gentlemen, the Democratic Republic of Congo, my country is one of the biggest countries in Africa, which has a wide surface area and 52% of total freshwater resources of the African continent. Its forest covers 150 millions hectares of the national territories, which makes it one of the biggest forest countries in the world, which has, indeed, our country covers half of the forest of the Congo basin, and so we need to mobilize efforts and also adequate investments to manage these resources in a fair and reasonable way and also put emphasis on them at the local level without compromising the wellness of future generations and to guarantee the livelihood of our future generations. In the framework of the mechanism for urban planning, which is in the framework of the 2030 Agenda of the United Nations, I would like to first and foremost say that ever since 2015, the international community has adopted under the auspices of the UN the Agenda 2030, which is an agenda post-2015, which includes 17 new SDGs, up to this date, and under the leadership of his Excellency, the President of the Republic, Felix Antoine Tchiseka-Ditilombo, President of the Republic, who is represented by Mr. Kenghe, our Minister of the Democratic Republic of Congo, is currently making considerable efforts to reach the SDGs, whether it's to fight against poverty or the access to quality education for all, justice, or modernizing infrastructure, that is roads, ports, airports, etc., infrastructure, schools, health centers, universities, and what have you. We also are fighting against climate change throughout the different reforms that we have implemented to the territory, the forest, the energy sector, the industry sector, and as well through good governance. This is of course not a full list, but it shows the efforts that the government has been making. Indeed, we're actively participating in the implementation and the reaching of the SDGs, to make sure there is good governance at territorial level. We still have a long road ahead. Indeed, our country has very high needs. What matters today is that we have big challenges ahead, and so we need colossal investments. And we have a finance plan to strengthen national resources. We need to also mobilize partner countries to fully implement their ODA pledges. We also have to mobilize added financial resources from nontraditional resources. We also need to preserve the sustainability of debt on the long term, and go in favor of date restructuring, and also put an emphasis on direct investment for foreign partners. When it comes to the key needs and the priorities, when it comes to urban planning, all across our countries to reach the SDGs, or to reach the targets of the 2063 agenda of the African Union. I want to once again reaffirm that I am convinced that we are capable of reaching the 2030 agenda and the 2063 agenda following the policies of territorial urban planning by focusing on roads, plants, highways to ensure the smooth mobility of people and goods to implement the vision of our President. And to make the Republic of Congo an emerging country by 2035, the government of the Republic of the Republic and the framework of our development plan has taken several initiatives when it comes to key investments and key priorities in the sector of infrastructure of road transport and communication channels in order to foster economic recovery, to mobilize needed resources to manage the upkeep of our infrastructure system and to strengthen the access to basic services, which means education, sanitation, and energy, and finally promote the national and regional integration. The Democratic Republic of Congo has identified big roads of high importance, which ensure that we are connected to our provinces and regions, which represents more than 20,000 kilometers of roads, and so we need a high investment to create direct jobs. We want to unify our D.R.C. and connect it to its provinces by ensuring the modernization of these road networks that will be able to strengthen the trade between the D.R.C. and other countries of the continent. In the framework of the National Development Plan for the economic development of the D.R.C., we adopted a strategy that is based on an integrated approach in which the primary activities such as agriculture, and the forestry sector, the oil product sector, trade, financing, and regulation, all of these sectors are integrated within one same strategy, which is called growth poll. And so this plan has identified eight key areas, the Mata corridor to develop agriculture, which is an emphasis on materials for construction, the corridor for the development of agriculture, the corridor for the mine, forestry and agriculture, the corridor for the development of mine, forestry, and fishing, the corridor for the transports and agriculture, the corridor for the development of agriculture, tourism in the mountains of Ranga, the corridor and another corridor for fishing, tourism around the Tanganika. As you may have noticed, we have implemented different activities in different zones, and so we need accurate spatial and urban planning, which we are aware that this also requires economic modification. We have made investments in the framework of our strategy to reach the 2030 Agenda, and the 2063 Agenda. We have also invested in the project Grand Inga. This is a project that involves 15% of the population in the Republic. The president of the public, Félix Tchaikedi, wants to also develop Inga through its African dimension and its world dimension. DRC is a country of solutions, and through Inga, we want to offer to our citizens to African as a whole and to the rest of the world a clean and affordable energy. And Félix Tchaikedi wants to do so with everyone involved, that I am saying, everyone. He mentioned it during his last trip to the Republic of China, and we are here today to talk about it as well. The interest of the president of the Republic is an open approach which involves everyone. He wants to involve the present generation, the current generations, and the future generations. The project of Continga will produce its first kilowater, generate its first kilowater of electricity soon. The president has made possible this great project of Inga. And so we are calling for the mobilization of all to finalize this huge investment. In parallel with the COP27, which is organized in China, in Egypt, I had the pleasure of talking with the president of the AFD in the framework of the modernizing of cities in DRC. Alongside the French development agency, I have the pleasure of announcing that we have agreed upon an investment for a project, a 50 million euro project, and 10 million of those are coming from subsidies, and the rest from Contissional loans. It is a step forward because indeed in the framework of territorial governance, the city of Boma was chosen, and Boma is the former capital of DRC. Ladies and gentlemen, when it comes to the national plan as the ministry of territorial planning, my team and I are always using the 2030 agenda and its targets in order to make a reality division of our president of the republic in order for all our citizens to have equal access to basic services, have decent life quality, and have good economic and social situation. In the 145 territories covered by the steering committee, chair, to fight against this committee wishes to fight against poverty and also transform the conditions and the life of Congolese populations that use that up until now have lived into zones that are lacking infrastructure and basic services. We have implemented a program. One of my colleagues working on such a project is with me in the room today, and this costs 1,600 million American dollars. Urban and territorial planning includes different actors and it is across a sector of fraud. We will be implementing the right tools for urban planning by focusing on different toolboxes. This is to create tools and implement actions into carry out a proper follow-up by following the directives of the president of the republic. Felix Antoine Chichiquidi is essential to restructure the global financial architecture in a way that is efficient for developing countries and it is essential to invest for SDGs, the initiative stimulus SDGs, which aims at countering the negative situation in which the developing countries are funding themselves by increasing the financing by 500 billion per year through consensual funding and non-sensual funding is a big step forward because as you know countries such as Congo in which to when we are asking to make improvements when it comes to nature preservation all this there has to be the right trade-off indeed we're asking our population to not use their land when without this land have no means of livelihood and so we need to compensate them with investment. I want to put an emphasis on the fact that implementing the SDGs in the DRC is being carried out in a context of conflict and instability more notably in the eastern part of the country which has an impact on the public resources and the allocation of public resources allocated to the war effort in the fight against armed groups which are causing destruction in our cities and our territories. In this part of the country day and night women are raped, children are beaten and there was a report that was recently made public by experts of the United Nations which has proven that the war is causing insecurity in the eastern part of our country. I am thus calling upon and it is what our republic wishes. I want to call upon international solidarity in the face of this situation indeed the sound of gunshots is still being heard whether it be in Ukraine or South Sudan or wherever else in the world I am calling for peace for security and for prosperity ladies and gentlemen distinguished guests I thank you for your attention thank you very much. Merci à vous votre excellence thanks to thank you your excellency for addressing this audience today I didn't write it down but you mentioned a number of time these spatial analysis planning and data the term spatial is of course something at the SDSN that we that is very important and important priority and of course an important priority of this SDG transformation center. Our next speaker is professor Jeffrey Sachs the director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University and president of the SDSN Jeff the floor is yours. Thank you very much and thank you minister for excellent remarks I want to spend just a few minutes to introduce the report that people should have at their seats and to explain a little bit about what we are are doing and what we're aiming to do and I'm going to do that by going back 50 years to the start of my studies of economics and to say that at that time there was a newly minted Nobel Prize in economics the first one given to a Dutch economist named Jan Tinbergen and he was a magnificent economist that made a great contribution to humanity that doesn't often go together with the economics profession but he did it because he took very seriously the idea that economics should be a science to improve the human condition and he wanted to put that into numbers and he wanted to put that into public policy in a serious way so he did two things first he developed the first ever quantitative model of the Dutch economy so that he could use that small mathematical framework with an adding machine at the time by the way because this was very time consuming in the 1930s to make statistical estimates but he wanted to have a framework to be able to talk about the public policy choices then he did something rather remarkable and that is he invented the field of economic policy design now you say well what does that mean that field he came up with a core concept which for me for 50 years has been very crucial and that is he said we have some targets and we have some instruments to achieve those targets and if we know what our targets are and we know what our instruments are and we know how the economy functions then it's a mathematical calculation to say what our instrument should be what our policy dials should be how much we should invest here how much we should spend here how much we should tax here in order to achieve our targets and so he invented the framework of targets and instruments if you're in economics you live and breathe that you don't know that it was an invention you know certain things like you need basically as many instruments as you have targets then you have to make sure that they're not collinear and many other things and if your economy behaves in a linear way it's inverting a matrix to tell you here are my targets here are my instruments here's my how the economy works i invert a matrix and lo and behold i know what i should do as a policymaker it's all very logical actually it's how good decisions are made in businesses and in organizations and in optimum design and efficiency it's not so much how public policy is made however because that is too logical public policy is the arena of power it's the arena of lobbying it's the arena of conflict it's not the arena of inverting a matrix or solving a set of nonlinear equations though if it were the world would be better off in many ways actually we would know what to do we would make decisions about what would be worthwhile and we would go about doing that well he designed all of that around 80 years ago and i started studying economics 50 years ago and by the time i was studying economics they told us the problem's a little bit more complicated now you needed a dynamic equation so instead of just a matrix you have a differential equation you need to solve but then we had computers and so i was put in a computer lab and i was shown how to make a numerical calculation and then a very clever group of mathematicians in russia designed what we call optimum control theory and designed how to optimize a dynamic system so that's what i learned which is okay you want to decarbonize by 2050 here's how your energy system works here is how your technologies work now you have a set of equations and if there are nonlinear equations you can do a numerical estimation and solve for the best pathway for decarbonizing how much should you invest this year how much should you invest next year so that by 2050 you reach your target and since it's a multi-dimensional system you want to reach a vector of targets in fact according to the un 169 of them and that's in each country so it's 169 times 193 well it's no problem for modern computer but the idea is link your policies to your targets i really came to like that idea and by the way then i it was realized by bellman that maybe you should add uncertainty in this and so you need to have a not just the pon triagin conditions but you need the bellman equation and that's numerically solvable also so we can say what even we should do under uncertainty to tell you the truth this is the right way to do things that we should say here's what we would like how should we achieve those goals what would be the logical approach to actually achieve what we've said little we do that so with the sdgs we set some basic goals and the goals are really nice goals they're not shocking like all children should be in school until they complete secondary school come on of course are you kidding so it might be interesting for somebody in the world to reflect on the 500 million or so kids that aren't in school right now up through upper secondary and say gee that is a tragedy and it's a violation of what we set to do do we have any instruments for meeting that target and then you'd say well yeah actually it's called a school building you build it and then you have a teacher inside and you could even put in electricity so that you could be on the grid and maybe a toilet inside so that the students could stay there all day actually we know how to do that we train people and give them masters and phd's degrees in education planning and similarly we have a target that everybody should have universal health coverage sdg4 sorry sdg3 sdg target 3.8 sdg4 is for education that everybody should have a quality education it's not so hard if we tried and what you realize in public policy is that most of the things we're talking about are a mix of economic activities that require physical infrastructure and trained personnel in order to carry out certain tasks in our society like schools like clinics like hospitals or building roads or having a water and sewerage system sdg6 or having a power grid sdg7 and so forth so to me this we have plenty of instruments we have clear targets the targets to my mind make ample sense which is why all 193 un member states agreed with them adopted them but then to get people to link the targets and the instruments is absolutely the weirdest hardest thing in the world and so we go yeah we love the sdgs well what are you going to do about them what do you mean well what are your instruments what are your targets what is your model of achievement what's your timeline and what's interesting is how are you going to pay for it because actually running a school costs money and training the teacher costs money and if you have a dynamic system it's an investment process you build the capital the human capital the physical infrastructure and so forth nothing too fancy that's what a standard development economics framework is all about and you try to say here's what we should do in order to reach the targets that we've set there are maybe are a handful of governments that do this in the world you need a good strong planning agency you need good analytical skills you need that your political leadership actually is interested in trying to link the instruments of governance with the targets that they have ostensibly agreed to our international institutions barely do this which is for me one of the biggest surprises is the IMF which I like and work with almost every day for the last 40 years I'd say in one way or another doesn't do its job never has for the whole 40 years that I've worked with it because they don't ask what they do is they are the interface with the finance minister they never sit down with the finance minister not once in my experience in four decades and say how can we solve your instruments and targets problem in other words they never sit down and say you know you're supposed to meet the SDGs you're the democratic republic of Congo but none of your people has electricity now what could we do about that oh yes inga grand inga we should build that because that would provide 70 gigawatts of power they'll never ask that question what they will do is say finance minister you have this much money don't spend more than it you'll give us a problem or you'll have inflation and so show us how you're going to limit your spending and that is the end of it so I have been arguing for many years it's actually now 25 years but I made progress in the last four years that they should learn how much it costs to provide a kilowatt hour of power how much it costs to have a child in school how much it costs to have someone have health care how much how much it costs to build a kilometer of road those are things the IMF never knew strange because they are our international institution to deal with the finance ministers of the world what do finance ministers do they try to link instruments and targets so the IMF did some very nice studies four years ago and then two years ago and they asked how much would it cost to achieve the SPGs by 2030 on the timeline for five priorities health care education roads power and water and they found out that for a low income for they have 57 countries low and lower middle income that are their countries in need and they call them low income developing countries lidcs and they made the calculation how much would it cost to finance this and then they made the calculation how much revenue does this government have out of its taxes and if it tries harder to raise taxes so it increases the fiscal space so-called and then you know what they found there's a gap of about 500 billion dollars a year it's impossible for the drc to achieve the SPGs out of its own resources it's impossible now what did they do with that finding so far they wrote a nice paper it has not changed anything in public policy at all except that there's an acknowledgement we have a financing gap and it's not professor sack saying it it's not some radical saying it it's the IMF which is I would say the core of our institutional establishment and they've acknowledged there is a gap of several hundred billion that's not even a full accounting that's just for 57 countries and for five targets there are many more to be achieved so let me tell you a piece of good news if the drc had electricity if you had transport if you had internet coverage and especially if the children were able to stay in school up through upper secondary with quality teachers the drc would achieve economic growth of about 10 per year for the next 30 years at least that means it would double every seven years in size and if it did this for 35 years that would be seven doublings and if you look at what seven doublings would mean fine sorry that would be five doublings excuse me if you look at what five doublings that's two to the fifth power so that's 32 fold increase and so even if the drc borrowed this money to do this if it borrowed at the same terms that the french government would borrow or the same terms that the german government would borrow say three percent on a 30 year bond in 30 years your economy would be something completely different from what it is right now and how do we know because china did exactly that china did it for 40 years massive investment they made the investments they grew its 10 per cent per year for 35 years they increased more than 30 times they freaked out the united states by the way they got so big that now we have a completely neurotic america but that's another issue that's a different lecture that's a psychoanalytic lecture about trying to be number one when someone else is is very big but the point is you could even do this with financing you don't need to do this with gifts you could close the gap with loans and not even loans at extraordinary terms loans at normal terms what do i mean by normal i mean normal that the united states or france or germany would be able to finance the government for when we borrow we borrowed a fund wars that's what the united states borrows for we spent six trillion dollars on the stupidest wars imaginable and ran up a big debt and who cares we could borrow it two percent interest and so forth but what if the drc went to borrow that way huh mr minister you wouldn't get a penny no one is going to lend you money just to tell you the hard facts or you'd be triple c rated and you would get a three-year loan at sixteen percent interest and development doesn't take three years it takes thirty years and so you would default after three years and then everyone would say you see i told you so this is the sense in which you have to link targets targets and instruments and finance together because the actual fact is the sdgs are financeable even on on a not an aid basis just on a normal market finance basis except global markets don't work properly they fund the rich they don't fund the poor there are a lot of interesting reasons for that but i'll tell you the truth no one in economics really understands this and our Nobel prize winner that died just a few weeks ago robert lucas wrote a very influential paper about 20 years ago asking why doesn't capital flow from rich to poor countries and he didn't know and nobody knows for sure except the system's a bit rigged and one reason is incidentally that if congo to were to borrow you could not it could not borrow in its national currency would borrow in our currency and it would get into a liquidity crisis because there'd be no central bank to bail it out and the imf which could have been a world central bank was stopped by the united states in 1944 from becoming a world central bank which was the idea that john maynard canes had so it's a lot to say except here's the basic point we have set targets we have the instruments to achieve them when we calculate how to achieve them as best we can on a spreadsheet or a model it looks pretty reasonable maybe it's another two trillion dollars a year needed directed at these investments two trillion dollars among macroeconomists isn't quite nothing but it's two percent of world output per year for the fate of the world it's not a big deal and since it's a loan not a gift it's even less of the deal and since global saving is about 30 trillion dollars a year it's about one fifteenth of global saving which if directed towards poor countries would get the kids in school would get the clinics and running would get electrification for everybody would have water and sanitation for everybody it would accomplish all of these things so to me this is the biggest puzzle of our whole world why doesn't this happen we've set the goals we can run the models we can look at the spreadsheets we're adults so we can talk to each other we can reason together but it doesn't happen instead i read a headline world bank announces it will be 430 billion dollars to rebuild ukraine okay what does that mean in translation it means we're going to knock down 430 billion dollars of good things and then we're going to spend money to rebuild it that's how the world works that's crazy by the way better yet save the 430 billion and achieve the sustainable development goals and the war talk with each other negotiate don't destroy a whole country and it's both sides that need to talk to each other this is a war between the u.s and russia to a large extent so we need actually a different approach so we have been writing this report for the last eight years which is tracking how things are going and what it would take to get them to go right so it's the targets and instruments problem we have indicators here you know here yeah how many indicators about a hundred indicators those are our targets and then we measure are you on a path to achieve the 2030 targets well the answer is not for one single goal and there's no country in the world that's on a path for all of them and for much of the developing world they are there's not a country that is achieving even one of the goals and we need to link our targets and our instruments and our targets our instruments and our finance and that's what this summit that president macron has called is all about in my view and i think in his view i hope as well which is how do we link what we've said we are going to do with the means to do it the targets and the instruments now mind you just a couple of more quick points and then i will finish first what we have said we would do is not only climate though we're obviously not even doing that we said we would look at climate action in at least three dimensions decarbonizing or ending the greenhouse emissions net zero by 2050 creating climate resilient or adapted societies and being able to respond to losses and damages not one of those is funded properly right now but in addition even in the paris agreement right at the beginning it says this agreement is in the context of sustainable development because the paris agreement was reached on December 12 2015 a few weeks after the sdgs were adopted on September 25 2015 so it's in that context so what we need is a financing framework that covers climate and sustainable development and since those two agreements were reached we reached two more important agreements this year we reached the kunming montreal biodiversity framework and we just reached the open seas or high seas treaty under the un convention of the law of the seas and those are also investments that need to be financed so nobody yet and we haven't done it yet though this is one of our aims is to understand these numbers fully what we do understand very well is that low income countries and lower middle income countries cannot achieve the sustainable development goals with the current global financial architecture we also understand maybe paradoxically that a lot of lending even without oda in the traditional grant sense could close the gaps because with proper investment poor countries could really achieve rapid economic development there is no intrinsic reason to be poor in this world countries are poor because they lack electricity skilled workers fiber and other core infrastructure there's no other reason than that and because they're poor they can't invest in those things on their own and the credit rating agencies give them a sub investment grade so they can't do it through markets and so we're looking for official solutions in one way or another so the first part of the report details the fact that we're way off track not surprising some countries in quite desperate shape like drc which needs a lot of help and the world has stolen from drc for so long it's been 150 years of non-stop plunder since a very nasty king of the belgium started the stealing and creating even a slave colony in his name and the stealing has gone on for a long time so it's time to help you minister fund the development of your country this is the most basic point that we can imagine the second part of our studies what we call sdg transformation laboratory is trying to apply tin bergen to the sdgs how can you achieve the sdgs what are the instruments what is the investment profile the most important term that i would convey to you for this is pathway what is the pathway between now and 2030 and the pathway between now and 2050 to get to where we want to go it's a trajectory it's not a point it's not a single policy it's an investment program over a period to mid-century and that is the second part of our work the third part of our work is asking which governments care it's a very interesting question for me since the united states government does not use the phrase sustainable development goals weird there are five countries that have not had a voluntary national review of their sdg strategy they are south sudan you can think in your mind why south sudan me and mar yemen hady and the united states of america so the country that says we're a leader they don't say we're a leader they say we're the leader doesn't even mention the sustainable development goals well you cannot find your instruments if you don't even have targets so that's another big problem that we face so we made an index of government sdg effort and commitment we were able to rank 74 countries it's interesting and sad the united states ranked 74th on objective data do you abide by un treaties are you a member of the un do you mention the sdgs do you have a sdg program all of the different components russia is 72 out of 74 so i think the two countries that are at war would do a lot better making peace and then working on sustainable development actually because they're wasting their time and destroying ukraine in the meantime instead of actually doing what they need to be doing so we are midway through i want to thank the government of france and by the way the most innovative person in all of international finance in recent years is the person who's going to speak next after me it's true because he's the one that's brought all the international institutions together more than anybody else i will let yome introduce him in a moment but i'm really grateful to the government of france for hosting this summit i'm profoundly grateful to mayor idago not only for inspiring us and hosting us in this day but also chairing a new very important commission that will help to solve one crucial piece of this puzzle and that is the financing at the urban level and she and mayor paiz of rio are two great mayors that will help to pull this together so it's a privilege to launch the sdg report 2023 we are really launching today the sdg transformation laboratory our work is to make the diagnostics the analytics the quantification the policy frameworks to actually achieve what we have said we want to achieve and the reason is what we have said we want to achieve is really important for us to achieve thank you very much well thank you so much jeff for the powerful words and also for basically doing my job so i don't think remi needs much introduction it's my pleasure to welcome mr remi rio on stage the ceo the director general de l'agence français de développement of french development agency director of the french development agent it's quite hard to take the floor following the two previous speakers i want to thank you for your words jeffrey and i want to thank and idel go as well madam mayor for inviting us to this beautiful events that covers such a key topic that is the financing of mr le ministre cities to reach the sdgs thank you very much to minister luanda amio and boyo we launched your obama project during the cop 27 in charmash hike and it is a pleasure to see that this project is currently ongoing i'm also seeing many friends in the room uh dear nakao it's a pleasure to see that you are now working for the university of tokyo dear eric it is lovely to see you as well from the your investment bank dear agno agno gatshal for europe a deputy for europe international relations in franco phony the and uh dany dalgo uh along side any dalgo and whom we are working with on a regular basis what i wanted to share with you today is the perspective of a player of a financial institution i also wanted to add a couple of words on the summit which will take place tomorrow and the day after tomorrow the friend development agency is um now closely tied to these uh so the works are currently um on going and hopefully doing the next two days there will be very concrete decisions and messages will be shared and the messages that were shared today will be picked up during these two days of discussion this moment is important and integral it's a key part of our collective work in the spirit that was defined by jeff sax and thank you for this report which underlines the emergency indeed the report on sustainable development 2023 before this message is highlighting this message of emergency and it will be picked up once again at the end of september when the national general assembly of the united nation meets to carry out a stock take of the sdgs and we will then see that we are far from having reached them and that we are in a situation of emergency for the summit tomorrow and the after tomorrow we want to help for the emergence of a new consensus so this is a discussion that will take place amongst has the state so at the highest level possible and we hope that this new consensus will have three key components which are tied and linked together the first one was mentioned by jeff and he did so with lots of talent that is the need for a new reference framework so a new rationale the need for a new methodology as well the 2015 was a year of revolution but sadly the summits weren't organized in the right order indeed in july of 2015 there was another summit that was organized which was the summit of adi sebeba on the financing of development and then we went to new york at the end of september for the adoption of the 17 sdgs and then we met in paris again for the paris agreement on climate change and we then we met in montreal and it could mean for biodiversity but the summit on financing was held at the beginning of this whole process which is a bit strange because we should have talked about financing at the end of these summits and so ever since 2015 we have one issue which is that our the mandate of all our international financial institutions and national institutions and this includes ours and friends the french development agency this mandate is simply not clear enough and it is not in line with the political objectives that were set back then and made a reality through the sdgs and so i believe president macron has a real will to change and correct this this time frame indeed we have to make sure that the financial system is in line with our political ambition it is the aim of this summit tomorrow of course the summit will only be a step as part of this entire process the decisions will be made in other fora in the united at the united nations general assembly during the cop 28 in dubai in these in this legitimate fora i'm also thinking about the summit that will take place in india but hopefully we will we will be able to push for this movement and launch this this movement and i hope that our work will be useful of course the big topic today is to define a framework in which climate and development are not opposed this is the main goal of the sdgs but once we still see that this is quite a difficult question which leads to distrust in the on the international scene and we have to overcome these differences and put it into that distrust so this is not my expertise all all my clients want to have climate and development together but it's still a reality and so we need to move away from this reference framework that we currently have with oda on one side oda is useful but it is a framework that was set up in 1969 so way back when and of course ever since then it has been clearly more clearly defined and it was late to the development goals but we know that all this money is not well allocated because we now have different challenges and on the other side we have another reference framework in which we have public money and private money it is less clear and this is what we call climate finance so kopenhagen in 2009 2010 and so for a while these two frameworks strengthened one another we saw climate finance and oda rise but what i'm seeing is a different trend and so we really need to now define a clear unique framework within which all players public and private will be able to act and this will be able to unleash the financial power which will give which will make sure that that policies can be implemented and this is a message that we share within development banks but the heads of states to help us along this this path and let us know what the asijis are what what in what ways we can align with them we also have to mention the different trajectories of different countries and how we can move forward in a more livable world so the the second objective is the summit is new financial means of course we will take a close look at that and for that we have different options on the table so jeff has mentioned a couple of them there was the issue of special drawing rights and these hundred billion that were announced in 2020 in may 2021 will that be rich the question reached the question of a hundred billion that was promised in kopenhagen will that be reached as well it will certainly be reached but maybe with delays and there there's also the issue of international taxation and taxation of maritime transport how to make sure there's more fiscal space in countries that find themselves in a difficult situation due to their public debt so we decided to bring all these issues to this table with the hope to find solutions and france is well placed to do so in fact as you know we have reached 0.56 percent of our we have allocated 0.56 percent of our wealth to odye there was a part there was a pledge made by president macron and we allocate six billion euros per year for climate finance this was a pledge that was made after the paris agreement and in france we have a lot of taxation and we have a tax on financial transactions which brings in every year two billion euros and one third of this amount is tied to development there's also a different tax the tax which is a tax on plane tickets which brings in a little bit less money but around 200 million euros and so we wish to go even further for more international collaboration and cooperation and we want this movement to accelerate so that we find the right to financial solutions and third key element of the summit the new financial architecture at a global level we do not we don't only need a reference framework we also need to implement the right policies and bring financial resources to the last mile and we need to reorganize financial institutions and we need to have a different organization of public financial institutions so bigger development banks that are more limber and this is what we launched during the previous summit the finance in common fix we call it let's fix it together and the idea is to have the right ties between different financial institutions which are key and to make sure that they're also linked to regional institutions and national institutions indeed the SDGs are about transition all countries need to transition and change their marketing their system as a whole and so this message has to be ingrained in every state in every territory and there's a 550 development banks in the world we have one in France which is the oldest bank in the world it was it came about in 1816 after the of the wars waged by Napoleon it is the ques de dépôt et consignation and it has been useful it is still robust its financial weight is one year worth of french GDP so three times the world bank it is a huge financial institution the japan also has development bank germany as well there are development banks in many countries of the world there are 550 development banks and when we add up the financing from all these institutions that represents of $2,500 billion and to achieve the SDGs we need two or three trillions per year two or three thousand billions and we are still expecting them we're waiting for them but this is a key message maybe if you could take a look at our initiative finance in common and maybe challenge the way we have set it up and if you can help us to better structure this big public investment system and if you can help us to better use this public investment to mobilize other players and also the other 85 percent of the financial system which are obviously private investors well it would be super um indeed they find the private sector is not financing everything but the more private investors we can bring in where opportunities of projects are then the better the situation will be so once again thank you to Jeff thank you to to everyone the french development agency have been in contact with these different institutions and are trying to work alongside them in the best way possible i will end by saying and i think it's particularly pertinent that when we think about the financing of cities so over in the financing which is the topic of the meeting today well it is one of the issues one of the biggest issues on our market um we have it's faulty and so we have to make sure that uh that financial institutions um go towards uh local territories i was with the mayor of baranquilla just a couple of minutes ago and we financed a project in the cities of baranquilla without the guarantee from the national government and so this was financing in pesto so it wasn't in dollars or in euros and it's been going smoothly so far and it has an impact on populations and uh no neighborhoods um and we and so we finance infrastructure sporting infrastructure which of course makes this project um even better let me remind you that the ellipsoid games that will be happening in paris um next year and we can finance uh sports with uh development financing we can um also finance different uh projects such as uh waste management and lome there's a wide array um we there's three billion euros uh coming from the uh if the uh per year that goes towards cities and so we need to go even further to finance non-sovereign entities so that means not only governments indeed uh we're too far too often in this paradox of uh highly indebted governments uh to um who we ask for sacrifices when the other public actors are not uh being financed or being financed in a very limited way so there needs to be a the right balance has to be struck so two-thirds of the sg's depend from um are depending on um the financing of cities and soon the majority of our population will live in cities so we have to act quicker go further and we have to innovate when it comes to financial instruments and i will end my speech by saying that i am particularly happy to be here with you today in the mary de paris i've always asked myself what is the role of paris in the uh world governance and i'm quite happy to uh be here with you today hopefully this uh fits for a new financial pact uh will be fruitful and i'm very happy that it is taking place in paris and i believe it uh uh it's for a reason indeed the french government has been um conveying these messages for many years and the city of paris it's climate academy it's uh planned for adaptation to climate change are are um conveying and supporting these messages as well and in paris uh is a host of uh players influence on the on the international scene and and different organizations we have many institutions that um are specialized in research and in higher education and we also have in paris the unesco so the un agency for science education and culture and the main day of unesco is uh to uh to move forward uh for more for sustainable science and it does though as well it does so in paris but also does so around the world and it does a tremendous work on sustainable development sustainable science is essential and we also have many players involved in sustainable finance in paris and at then we have a big organizations which is the oecd which is located in paris this is at the oecd that oda was invested invented and in a national taxation in a new in a new context well this is all happening at the oecd and there's also peri euro plus near the oecd the world bank and the imf also have offices in paris which are garnering more and more importance are there's many players in paris who are committed and who are creating this ecosystem um and when i come to your question about the solutions for um for sustainability deo jeff well i i think this has to go through a dialogue with the world of science and the world of finance and so that won't be easy but of course we need to have a place where we can meet so it doesn't always have to be paris this debate is also happening and dialogue is also happening in new york in in many other capitals around the world in iroby for example but all the perision players could really play their part in in this in this dialogue here in paris um we published a paper in the journal du dimanche at the beginning of the week in odrey azulet john denton john denton the world chamber of commerce all the chamber of commerce of the world have a john denton an office in paris and if you pay attention to what john denton has been saying um they they have completely uh made the sdgs theirs and um they're conveying this this message they they want to reach the sdgs so let's build together so that's a laboratory this platform for solutions for um for sustainable development of course this requires more um implication more financing and this is why we are meeting today and this is why we're meeting over the next two days in paris thank you very much for your attention thanks very much well first of all for for coming despite the very busy agenda but also for this forward-looking uh thoughts around the role of paris in international development finance but also the historical perspective on the public development banks the ucd the official development assistance so a major thank you um for being with us today let's move on to our very last panel uh of the day um and so i would now like to welcome on stage our panelists for this session who are all working on various pieces of this complex sdg financing puzzle so i would like to invite dr simona marinescu on stage uh simona is the un senior advisor on financing and development for sids at the united nations office for project services i would then want to invite dr salimul huck director for the international center for climate change and development and professor at the independent university of bangladesh and i would also like to invite dr naoko ishii the director for the center for center for global comments at the university of tokyo okay so as i said i think it's a great panel because i think you're all working on different bits and pieces of this agenda maybe just to set the scene and i will not try to summarize what we heard just now it would be too difficult but maybe just maybe five basic observations um to help give some context for the summit in paris starting tomorrow so we heard from jeff and others that clearly the sdgs are vastly off track and um i think this report that we're launching today and the un secretary general also said there's basically less than 20 percent of the target that are currently on track to be achieved and it's even worse for the poorest and the most vulnerable countries in the world that's the first point the second point is the sdgs are largely an investment agenda into physical infrastructure and human capital by many parts of the world like the physical space to invest in the sdgs i think there's right now more than 40 countries in the world that are on the verge of that crisis the third point is the annual sdg investment gap is significant but it's not out of reach now we heard some of the numbers today it's you know depending on the sdgs the imf the wecd we're talking about one to four trillion um usd these are important numbers now in the scale of world global output this is one to four percent of world global output and again global savings is at around i look this morning 27 trillion and rich countries mobilize 17 trillion dollars in post-covid recovery right um fourth the un secretary general called for an sdg stimulus to scale up investment into the sdgs but also for a reform of the global financial architecture to align global financing flows for the um sdgs and fifth we've got a sequence of international summits and events that are coming up one of course is starting tomorrow with this summit for a new global financing pact in paris we'll have a very important g20 summit the new deli in september it's actually quite interesting because four presidencies in a in a row of the g20 from the global south um we've got uh we had indonesia last year india this year brazil and we have me your patch with us today but then uh we're gonna have south africa as well and then um this sdg summit in september has a state level the cop in dubai and the summit of the future in 2024 so that's for the overall context and now i'd like to hear your thoughts on what are your expectations for the summit that is going to start tomorrow for a new global financing pact what should this um summit achieve and i would like to start maybe with you uh salim ul if you could share some of your thoughts on why the summit is is important and what it should achieve thank you very much yeoman good afternoon to everybody uh so let me start by um recollecting the last time i was in paris in 2015 in december at cop 21 where we had a very very big achievement in the paris agreement um which many people didn't think we would get and i must appreciate the government of france for having made that achievement unfortunately we had a good agreement but then eight nine years later we are nowhere near fulfilling what we had said we would do so i am hopeful that this time around in paris in the next two days when we leave we will leave with real commitments to act by the leaders who are here and not just negotiated text i mean one of the problems with the process that we have is we negotiate words until they become meaningless you know i just came from bon a few days ago and they spent 10 days and couldn't come to decisions 10 days of intensive discussions and they couldn't come to decisions that process is dysfunctional not fit for purpose and that's why i hope president macron getting the leaders that he has here and president and prime minister mia motley can actually knock heads together for the decision makers that matter and it doesn't have to be everybody just has to be enough of them to make a decision to actually do whatever it is they decide needs to be done and not look for consensus with the 193 countries that process is just not working thank you samimool now co what do you expect from this summit that's starting tomorrow why is it important i think i have been engaging with our global um uh negotiation for years and i'm a little as maybe a doctor have said i'm fed up with this process the negotiations we really need to go much deeper into the sources of the program and then uh kind of discussion how we can really solve or at least that that uh that the program and just for instance that i have been doing that the leading the gf global environment facility for eight years and during that time it was an interesting time the gf if you have any ideas that for the gf is trying to do is basically to safeguard the global commons it's a global environment not just a local environment but the global commons that is more like a uh that the climate system is one but the nature loss is another the ocean the land and then the fertilizer cycle those are all global commons the current financial system doesn't really address those global commons it's very busy to addressing the national framework a finance coming out of national framework but it's not really addressing that the global commons by the way if it's very much shared by every country and the current program also is that the the global north is quite responsible of a lot of pressure we are having on that then a planetary system but the current system really doesn't have an instrument to let them address that issue or to to pay for that and then also it doesn't really have an system to reward that the global south whether the people who are safeguarding global commons in in the economic way so in many many ways when i see this based on my own experience of global environment facility the current system doesn't have this and that instrument to address the global commons and i hope this discussion for tomorrow can have some kind of understanding of how can we fix the current system fit for purpose for those global common challenge then that they're not in doing that we want to make sure that they are a kind of natural economical transfer system from global north to global south not the handout not the ODA but the current system needs to find a way to actually economically reward the people who are safeguarding global commons that's my hope for the discussion together very interesting and Simona we'd like to have your perspective because you're of course right now senior advisor at UNOBS but you're you were just the former UN resident coordinator for Cook Islands Niue Samoa and Tokolelu so you have a very let's say practical experience of the challenges faced by SIDS so what are your expectations for parents thank you so much Guillaume and allow me to also thank the mayor honorable and Hidalgo for hosting us here and to thank SDSN for giving a voice to small island developing states obviously great expectations this week but as someone mentioned this is not going to be the end of the road we do acknowledge the fact that for the very first time international financial institutions have come together to come up with a fairer system with a less immoral development finance system and let me just stress a little bit the importance of restoring justice into the development system professor Sack spoke about that and many of the speakers refer to that but for small island developing states which are 58 countries around the world out of which 38 are members of the United Nations or 20% of the membership of the United Nations what is important is that not we will not only look into more money but we will focus on justice in access if we only walk away from this process with more money without changing the eligibility criteria to this money countries that are heavily indebted countries that have moved to meet income level will not be able to take full benefit of that so just to impress on the audience that what is critical is that we talk in Paris about a more generous system as discussed more money a much more manageable debt system that management system as well as obviously contingency financing we talked about the sds and how they can support further development but without changing the access criteria the 1969 system that the president of afg spoke about we will not get far enough small island developing states today spent 3000 up to 3000 us dollars per capita public spending i'm talking about public outlays you and this dsn and professor sacks made an analysis and doctor masa who is here in the room made an analysis showing that countries to make progress to the sdgs would need to spend a minimum of 18 000 us dollars public spending again so the component of development finance that is mostly that is highly correlated with sdg progress is public spending so since it spent six times less just to avoid get even more indebted we spoke about the minister from Barbados spoke today about how indebted countries get after each hurricane or cyclone in the pacific we had seven named cyclones every year over the last five years i served as resident coordinator so we need to look into again creating fair access and we work together on the multi-dimensional vulnerability index i can refer briefly to it and very importantly the third component of that is changing the programmatic requirements most of the countries cannot fulfill off all the requirements to be able to properly utilize effectively utilize the green climate fund the gf all those financial instruments that are vital again absence of funds and incapacity of of using development finance for sustainability is an existential threat to many countries but to seeds primarily so the requirements in the current system are impossible to meet by small governments by governments that have very limited capacities so i am happy to share that the multi-dimensional vulnerability index that adds to the gni per capita a measurement of issues that countries have many inherited that cannot change with policy is now before the general assembly it will soon be discussed again this year this very eventful year for development cooperation and that based on that we will be able to see countries regardless of the level of income per capita based on their vulnerabilities access more financing so our expectation this week since i represent the united nations is that we keep the enthusiasm high the commitment high to bring again justice to the development finance system and acknowledge that more money without access criteria changes and without programmatic requirements that could be met by countries will not resolve the problem thank you great thank you simona there was already a lot in your response let me pick up on what you just said right now so you are of course working on this measurement of vulnerabilities and just a few numbers i mean we heard earlier today the gdp drop in 2020 for mildeeves was minus 33.5 percent saint lucía minus 24.4 percent the bahamas minus 23.8 percent these are it's double digits that start with the two right and so i'd like to hear from you if we just go a little bit more into the depth of this can you say a few words about some of the instruments that can help here and in particular on the imf the special drawing rights but also other tools for financing sdgs in the long run in in sids we heard many time the bridge town initiative being mentioned can you talk a little bit about some of the instruments that you believe are the most promising sure thank you so much so first of all the bridge town initiative is fully reflected into the sdg stimulus of the secretary general so we do not talk about different frameworks the whole language is built around ensuring that there is a different policy for that restructuring that again we restore justice into that restructuring so if you're highly indebted you're less likely to be able to secure any financing so what's the morality of that so a new policy on that restructuring and is primarily looking into deferring that repayment to a later stage to allow countries to be able to recover from covid and then repay the debt into their means the second important component is obviously the contingency financing that we discussed about here which is more release of sdrs but very importantly is actually re-channeling the dormant sdrs that sit with developed countries and are not being used through multilateral development banks to allow the development banks to release more instruments at the lower cost to countries that are in need and of course we talk about additional funding development financing for all countries in need which means that we talk about up to 1.2 trillion private financing that is supporting of course the net zero agenda we also talk about pumping another 130 billion oda so additional oda through development banks to allow them to multiply this into 5 billion more lending to countries again at the price that they can afford so that's practically where we are so that restructuring more financing and contingency financing which looks into the reuse of the sdrs a little bit of more sdrs would also be welcome so hopefully that will happen as well for small island states for instance what is important is that sdrs first of all they need more sdrs could also buy some disaster insurance some parametric insurance that is so costly if you have three four events every year and possibly support be channeled through development banks so there is a promise when the IMF adopted the resilience sustainability trust there's a promise there that there will be a really evaluation of the prescribed holders of sdrs to allow more development banks to come in such as regional development banks in the caribbean one of the speakers tomorrow in our session at 4 30 is the caribbean development bank president who made that very clear that a little bit of sdrs channeled through regional banks would allow regional banks to support better not only seeds but other countries as well so those are practically the instruments we are looking into of course there are other topics but just to conclude on the seeds what is expected is that short-term financing would need to be parametric insurance it's critical as we move into mid-term we look into debt relief debt restructuring that swaps state contingent debt instruments to allow them to get a little bit of fresh air and for long term as professor sacks mentioned using the integrated national financing framework of the united nations we're looking to zg bonds we're looking to resilience bonds we're looking to loss and damage funding arrangements we're looking to low low carbon growth fund resources so the instruments that would allow countries to have that 2030 year development vision without which we won't get too far thank you thank you so much simona it was actually quite interesting to hear from honorable minister from barbados earlier today that he sees potential in sustainability themed bonds for instance so that was that was interesting so let me turn over to you sally mul i believe some of you know you as one of the cop veterans the rumor says you you did not miss a single cup since berlin germany in march 1995 you've also been a long time advisor of the ldc group in the un f triple c before we just dive into the the instruments and the mechanisms and so on could you just give us a historical perspective on the evolution of the discourse and the narrative around this term loss and damages i mean both adaptation but more specifically this loss and damage term sure so let me hark back to my mention of being in paris in 2015 with the historic paris agreement one of the clear outcomes very positive outcomes from the developing countries perspective was a promise by the developed countries to provide a hundred billion dollars a year to support mitigation and adaptation starting from 2020 not 2015 so they gave themselves five years from now we will provide a hundred billion a year now 2020 is now three years ago and they haven't done it all right they might do it this year i hope maybe in the next 48 hours they'll announce they've reached a hundred billion for 2023 but they haven't done it yet all right so promises made and promises not kept is also very much detrimental to any kind of meeting and discussion but now we have a new kid on the block in paris we didn't talk about loss and damage finance the money was just mitigation and adaptation because that was what was needed then but now in 2023 we have already entered the era of impacts attributable to human induced climate change that are causing losses and damages that people are suffering and just to give you an example i flew a few days ago from Dhaka Bangladesh where we've had two successive heat waves now Bangladesh is very good at adapting to cyclones and floods which we get a lot of but heat waves is new for us temperature went over 42 degrees people students in school were collapsing and we just don't know how to deal with it and so we now have losses and damages from human induced climate change as in my view the number one issue that we need to address now we don't need trillions right now but we do need tens of millions and hundreds of millions that the leaders who are going to arrive in paris in the next 24 hours can write a check for while they're here and i expect them to do that thank you yeah so let's talk checks let's talk financing mechanisms um you've of course been vocal i believe at club club classical 2021 about what you call the globe's climate finance scandal so the lack of delivery of this us 100 billion tell me sarimur what do you see as the most promising mechanisms to finance those loss and damage there's of course you know that relief and you dedicated fund fiscal policy fiscal policy the taxation on aviation i believe you commented on what france is doing not long ago what are in your view the most um promising mechanisms so one of the issues that even developing countries have um struggled with in asking for more funding for loss and damage which fortunately we did get an agreement on in sharma shake last year in cop 27 is that it should not cannibalize funds that are supposed to be coming for adaptation and in my view in order for that to not happen we need to be looking at innovative sources of finance from wherever we can taxing polluters taxing the financial system a maritime levy and something i'm very keen to promote is an air passenger levy which the french government has done for number of years it works the the airlines collected from the passengers passengers don't even know they're paying for it anymore they collect 200 million a year over the last 10 years that's 2 billion euros which they give to the health fund why not germany why not europe european countries why not the middle east the europe united arab Emirates impose it on their own airlines this is a decision any government can make to tax their own airlines doesn't need a required agreement across everybody put a few dollars tax and put the money into a loss and damage fund so if the european union were to do it country by country we're talking 100 million a year which would be available for a new loss and damage fund and air passengers i would argue are actually more responsible for pollution they are polluters and should pay for the loss and damage fund rather than pay for the hiv aids which is not really something that they are responsible for is that french government have just decided that's what they're going to use the money for but i think we need to be doing much more in terms of innovative sources of finance and doing them quickly that really is the key because we don't have time to waste good now co can you tell us a bit about your work at the cgc the center for global commons but also about a specific paper that you're working on and i believe will be published in july on on options for financing um the protection the restoration of the global commons and in particular i think you've been quite vocal on the importance of costing natural capital yeah thank you um as i just said my person which came from that my gf time is to how to create the community global community to safeguard the global commons and that person i inherited and when i joined the university of tokyo we created the center for global commons and that's the history um then the work which uh we are doing together with the international partners including sdsn but also wri the peak and the systemic and others are trying to come up with this framework today we hear a lot about framework that how we can set the framework and then identify the targets and the sorry targets but also instruments how to achieve it so that is the essence so that uh we had a little bit of this modeling exercise too how to shift the system uh to achieve the or safeguard the global commons so we took a little bit of this maybe uh short term long term the money side but then our work is mostly focusing on the system transformation side uh as many of the institutions are doing we have chosen that of course energy transition but also food system transformation sustainable cities transition and the circular economy kind of thing so how we can really trigger those transformational system change to safeguard the global commons that's a kind of framework we are thinking of and then that um that creates a very interesting uh results uh so far and uh and as one of the um okay let me just now step back a little bit why we are focusing with the system change because that is the fundamental sources of the program we we do have now that all the issues like climate change and nature laws that then a pollution uh thing why that the hydrological cycle and the fertilized cycle is basically the collision between current human economic and social system with the capacity of the planetary earth so without really shifting our economic system we continue to have the same program for years so that's why that our personal is how we can really shift or transform the current economic system that was the our mission uh of of the center so that then under there are several instruments where it's a modeling uh today we talk a little bit about scenario how much energy transition we need how much food system transformation for the role of cities so it's a more like a system analysis or the scenario analysis but also we also come up with a dashboard of the index of that which country is responsible for the program and how much and that is the global commons that the stewardship index which we are doing together with sdsn and under the your leadership and that we ranked that and scored the performance of 150 countries and to and not only climate system but also the nature laws that the biodiversity and the land and water and those kind of important indicators and i just want to share with two very interesting outcome one it's not just global north but the entire g20 big economies are also responsible for environmental pressure so that then so we need to be very mindful it's not just the north south but it's also the huge responsibility of the g20 as a big production but also consumption countries the second outcome uh from that research is that those impacts are kind of transnational trans border for instance we japan imported more than 60 percent of the food and through that importation that then we actually create a push a lot of pressure put a lot of pressure by deforestation down forest countries and then putting a lot of using a lot of water when that another producing country grow the vegetable we use a lot of fertilizer that the through those importations so that the we the consuming country are quite responsible for the environmental pressure in the outside our national boundaries but the current system doesn't really capture it and this is basically only focusing on the production within the border but the most of the problem actually coming from outside the border that we have to find a way to how to capture them and how to price them because that the under the current system as i said at the beginning doesn't really appreciate the cost or the value of the natural capital and without really adequately valuing the natural capital we continue to have the same problem so that's why we were very keen to see not only just to take the natural capital as a risk point of view which we are doing a lot but how we can really create a system to value that the natural capital not only just uh you know emotional thing but as a monetary value of the natural capital if we were able to do it we will be able to actually to reward yeah transfer the resources to the global south and reward those that the people who are safeguarding global commons be it the smallholder farmers in the global south fisheries community forest community and those people who are doing safeguarding natural capital for the planet if the economic system can reward them it's going to be much more lasting much more sustainable and uh uh the economic and financial system which we are trying to aim at and that is one of the proposal i was doing paper to write to ask the bird i i just wanted to say that now attached on a very important point we we talk at the united nations about beyond the gdp agenda so that's precisely the point so you mentioned the gdp per capita growth rate in countries after the crisis so this is a measurement of the flow is the performance of the economy on an annual basis but countries also have stock which is the national wealth out of which natural capital is the most important by not evaluating the national cap the natural capital countries cannot improve their borrowing position to be very honest because those are assets that have market value that would strengthen their position when they start borrowing extremely important as now co mentioned this is a source of potential source of resources on one hand you're stronger when you borrow on the other hand is should that be adopted um as a measurement of fairness if you wish recognition that resources of other countries produce the food you are consuming with you know affecting their quality of life in the long term that would be an interesting step forward let me just say that the loss and damage has not been was not on the agenda at the paris agreement because at the time we didn't want to shame and blame anyone so it was a reunion of friends so we thought that we would do mitigation and adaptation together and we will not need to shame or blame anyone so that world has gone so seeds can no longer wait for that kind of solidarity to be restored so that's why we talk about loss and damage some more and now co mentioned sources of course we talk about levies on on fossil fuel with on the extraction itself on air we talk about levy on international shipping we talk about the windfall taxation for companies fossil fuel companies who speculate you know energy crisis and make huge profits we also talk about financing transaction costs a tax story as well as a little bit of new taxes on stock buyback when companies are buying back their shares to to control and raise if you wish the the price of the shares in the market so there are some ideas on the table but the IMF has promised the carbon pricing floor we discussed about that two years in a row so that's a very interesting idea so whoever is flaring carbon india would need to pay a tax that is a pricing floor that would mean to grow from let's say a few dollars per ton of carbon to 75 dollars by 2030 that would be a great incentive for the economies to green so hopefully that will happen otherwise we will stick with those innovative ideas that may not raise enough funds for what is required thank you thank you so much Simona and we're gonna have to end this this panel fairly soon but i just i just wanted to build on what you were saying and now co you mentioned and it has been mentioned today a number of times the role of the G20 you mentioned also that a country like Japan is generating quite a lot of those external negative spillovers on the rest of the world can you say a few words about Japan specifically and its its its leadership within the G20 but also right now as the president Japan has the presidency of the G7 how do you perceive the leadership of Japan on on those issues yeah actually as a president of the G7 one thing which i'm not okay which i'm kind of proud of is that at least at the G7 that in the community we present this TNFD it is natural capital as a quite important point forward so that the the TNFD still in my understanding to take the natural capital more on the risk side but if we are able to make it a positive as actually that the stock for for investment then the world will change so that is a homework for G7 how to change the perspective from that the risk to us that the potential asset the sources of the target of the investment that's one another good thing about G7 is just another perspective inviting global south to be a part of our partner that's another good avenue to move forward because it's not just that G7 you know trying to address this but then it is really the global agenda and where that the global south really have a great opportunity responsibility and partnership so that then from that point of view if we are able to you know broaden this dialogue towards the global south i think that then we will achieve a lot of the you know sustainable and equitable prosperous future for well we will end on those very nice words thank you so much simona naoko salimul for being on this panel today and please join me with a round of applause for our panelists today thank you so we will now close the panel but not only the panel the event as a as a whole for today and so there were supposed to be some closing remarks from Mayor Hidalgo but unfortunately there's a fire going on in Paris so Mayor Hidalgo had to leave let me just take a moment to thank all of our speakers today the Mérite Paris and the team that worked so hard for making this event possible Paul David, Thomas, Grégoire, Orion and many others the interpreters the film crew all the technical staff that's been involved today and finally the whole SDSN team who worked really hard on the report but also to make this event possible of course our President Jeffrey Sykes but also my colleagues and in particular I would like to thank Eamon Drum and Grayson Fuller for the hard work these past couple of weeks the Sustainable Development Report 2023 is available and we look forward to continuing this conversation with all of you over the next two days at the summit we wish you all a very fruitful summit and thank you so much for joining us today. Au revoir! Merci!