 And welcome everyone to today's event, Financing Long-Term Strategies, Our List Developed Countries and Founders Align. I hope you are all doing great today and ready for a very interesting conversation. I am now absolutely delighted to Julia Scareschakia, IA List Director of Climate, who will be our moderator today. Thank you. Thank you so much, Georgina. Welcome, everyone. Delighted to all able to join us today. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, depending on where you are. I'm Claire Sacchia, and as Georgina said, I'm moderated today. I'm the Director of the Climate Change Group at IID. So this webinar on Financing Long-Term Strategies will explore whether the expectations from the least developed countries are being met in terms of finance for developing and delivering long-term strategies for climate action in their countries. With the latest IPCC report making frighteningly clear the devastating impacts of human cause, greenhouse gas emissions, the need for a rapid and just global transition away from fossil fuels and towards low-carbon climate-resilient societies has never been clearer. The least developed countries, the LDCs, are amongst the most vulnerable to climate change despite contributing the least to its cause, understood too well, understand too well the urgency for immediate action as well as long-term planning to address the climate crisis. And under the Paris Agreement, we all agreed that parties should strive to formulate and communicate long-term, low greenhouse gas emission development strategies, and these have now become known as the long-term strategies. These strategies are not only important for high-emitting countries to set out the plans for a swift and just transition away from fossil fuels, but they can also provide many benefits for LDCs, even with negligible emissions and support aligning existing and new policies and measures across all societies and across the whole of society, across all sectors with the long-term goals. So far, just one LDC been in has submitted a long-term strategy to the UNFCCC, recognizing the value of developing one of these strategies for their governments, a number of other LDCs in the process of developing their own, including Bhutan and the Gambia. There's not a lot of experience to draw from as other LDCs face the daunting challenge of developing one of these strategies for adjusting climate change in their countries, but a lot can be learned from each other. So today, we aim to gather input and perspectives from LDCs and other stakeholders on what is needed to address LDCs' unique challenges in developing their long-term strategies. Long-term strategies are nationally determined based on national priorities for addressing climate change. And this means, particularly for LDCs, they're not solely focused on mitigation, but feature strategies for enhancing adaptive capacity, strengthening resilience and reducing vulnerability to climate change. As I've said, the LDCs contributed only a tiny proportion of the global greenhouse gases to date and will need support to develop their economies and lift people out of poverty without following the traditional high-emitting development pathways of the past while also adapting communities to changing climate and building resilience against the inevitable and worsening impacts of climate change. Climate finance and global solidarity and cooperation will be critical to achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement. And it's been noted in the past that climate finance is often not predictable or sustainable. Long-term strategies need to be matched with long-term funding approaches. And a strong and stable climate finance architecture is central to delivering the scale of resources required to achieve countries' objectives within their long-term strategies. But are the priorities and needs of LDCs aligned with these international finance institutions? Today, we hear from our esteemed panel with representatives from the LDCs, research institutes and development banks to explore whether expectations are aligned for financing long-term strategies in LDCs. The webinar will capture diverse experiences and analyze lessons from across the LDC group, which will enable deeper understanding and awareness of best practice. So let me now begin to introduce the speakers. Firstly, we have Ishtu Kamara, who is a deputy director in the Gambian Ministry of Finance and Economic Affairs. She has 10 years experience in development planning and has been negotiating outcomes of climate finance for the least developed countries under the UNFCCC since 2014. Alpha Jallo is the director of the Climate Change Secretariat and the UNFCCC focal point in the Gambia's Ministry of Environment, Climate Change and Natural Resources. We also have Devina Malengue-Wella, who is the principal program coordinator at the African Development Bank. Neha Mukhi, who is a senior climate change specialist at the World Bank. And Cynthia Elliott, who is an associate of the Global Climate Program at the World Resources Institute. Thank you all for joining us. I'm looking forward to this panel greatly. So if I start off by asking the first question to Ishtu and Alpha from the Gambia, what are the financing challenges and opportunities for developing long-term strategies? And how would you describe the status of progress towards your own country's long-term strategy? Ishtu, Alpha. Thank you, Claire. Good afternoon to everyone. It is a pleasure to be here, to participate in another IID webinar on the critical topic of financing long-term strategies. In responding to the question, I would like to highlight two primary financing challenges to developing long-term strategies. The first would be the issue of rising proportion of public climate finance on a low basis. Unfortunately, the Gambia and most LDCs are currently in debt distress. And the fact that an increasing proportion of public climate finance is being provided on a low basis is a major impediment to financing LTS. So for instance, the Gambia's current debt distress is high and it's deemed unsustainable. Hence the country has limited space for additional borrowing. And this has had an impact on the current national development plans implementation. For example, the grants accounted for 40% of the total 1.7 billion pledges by developed countries and with loans accounted for the remaining 60%. As a result, the national development plans implementation could not be fully realized due to constraints on the amount of resources the country could borrow. And this phenomenon is not only unique to the Gambia as debt levels in developing countries are at an all-time high as a result on less increasing proportion of public climate finance on a low basis is reversed to grant many LDCs, including the Gambia will have limited access to resources to implement long-term strategies. Secondly is the unmarged and unmet climate finance targets. Statistics has shown that the volume of resources required for developing countries to adapt to and mitigate the effects of climate change far exceeds the available resources. Implying that resources required and those available for climate action are unmarged. Besides this as well, the 100 billion goal per year by 2020 has certainly been a broken promise. Hence delivering the 100 billion target from now on would demonstrate a strong commitment to action. And it is a critical step towards rebuilding trust as well. And this could also provide the momentum for establishing the new climate finance goal which must be science-based in order to ensure that the resources required for climate action including long-term strategies are accommodated. On the financing opportunities, I think the alignment of the Gambia's long-term climate vision with the NDC and upcoming development planning documents such as the National Development Vision and the recovery plan which we are about to formulate important steps towards a more coordinated implementation of the Paris Agreement. So this alignment will help to accelerate the process of fully integrating climate objectives into strategies such as those of multilateral development banks in a way that better supports the needs and priorities of countries. And finally, the early involvement of development partners will also help to ensure that government and development partner interventions on climate change are in sync. So I'll leave it at that for now and I'll let Alfa also respond. Thank you, Claire. Thank you so much. It's to you very some very important points. Alfa, please. Thank you. And thank you, Aisidou, for those thoughtful thoughts. I just will be intervening in saying that our biggest challenge is increasing the resource base of climate financing. As it stands here, which has a 50% adaptation, 50% mitigation and that 50% is now divided between with all, for all developed countries. So that's a challenge, the challenge of increasing the resource base of climate finances. The other challenge is trying to put diverse the climate change adaptation from development, orientation, development, also content development. Because all of us will say that all of us infrastructure development is for national development and it's not related to climate development. But for developing countries, I think all of them are linked. You can address climate change adaptation without addressing other infrastructure development. In our NDP, we have a climate-proof infrastructure and that's the first infrastructure that are prone to climate disasters, like erosion of our roads, especially a narrow drainage system that can carry out the volume of floating in our residential area. So to take up those kind of development, what our donors will say that no, that is your national development, your national budget to take it on board. While on our side, it is all related to climate change impacts that is affecting our residential areas in terms of floating and about infrastructure of our roads, which are very low, flat roads, and it's difficult to manage them when it comes to only tar roads. Every year, our tar roads are destroyed due to rainfall or in high intensity routes. Now you can go around in our areas, the roads are very bad, but next two, three months after they have been repaired after rains, it's a different thing. So we need this climate-proof infrastructure to build for our road network. But our main challenge is divorcing from it from our main development targets. So the other aspect is that I want to inform you in terms of opportunity is that we are organizing a meeting, a breakfast meeting with some of the donor communities or donor organizations on process the 21st of this month at the Caraba Avenue to see how they can fund our implementation of our NBC which also includes the adaptation in it. So I think this is what I want to add what I soon have said until we go to the next question. Thank you. Thank you so much, Alpha. So some really challenging issues that you're facing there you've both laid out with them. So much of your climate finance coming as a loan and you've got already an unsustainable debt burden and that the 100 billion climate finance commitment must be met to build trust. The amount of resources at the moment has to be divided amongst so many that it's really small amounts that are coming for each one. And this issue around that development is now in the context of a change climate. So the presumption should be that climate finance don't have to prove it's being additional because you're already working within this change climate trying to develop. And then the positives of the long-term strategy alignment with the National Development Vision and Recovery Plan and also your efforts to coordinate donors behind your plans. Thank you so much. I turn now to Davina from the African Development Bank. So we're hearing most funding windows are just for up to five years. And the challenge of achieving the transformation needed with these predominantly short funding cycles was raised by all the vulnerable countries at the recent or the March Climate and Development Ministerial. So how does this affect achieving a country's 30 year vision as they're setting out in their long-term strategies? Well, thanks Claire and thanks colleagues from the Gambia for giving us really a detailed challenge case on what the problem is, really live examples of what they're living. And that should give us perspective on what a short-term financing does in not helping the situation. So very specific to answering your question. First of all, we need to understand what is contained in an LTS in your opening remarks. Claire, you mentioned that we are learning as we go by from what you've done at IED in terms of supporting the Gambia. There is not much in terms of lessons learned from other countries, as you rightly said, there's been one long-term strategy submitted from the country and Benin that has also submitted a short-term strategy. Now, what that does is long-term strategies are waded with long-term words, things like long-term vision, goals related to sustainable development and climate action around sectoral pathways. So there is already an embedded duration of action that it is towards transitioning to the next 40 years. And so what we see here is that finance has to have that projection or pathway arrangement in it. And that has not happened in the financial sector. It is still very traditional that a loan payment of a loan is, of course, especially on high-endeted countries is gonna be a short-term. And so that, there is a mismatch already there. And so I think what we need to spend time on is to understand why an LTS is important. And I wish to outline some of that. One is that an LTS increases political consensus on long-term direction, making it easier to plan for the short-term in the five-year cycles of NDCs and in the medium term. And you will all appreciate that when the first NDCs were designed, in fact, starting with INDCs, most of them were not documents that had deep analytics of economy-wide modeling. And while that was, they were not a functional document. An investor would not pick an NDC and it makes sense to them. And so there was a missed opportunity there with a revised and improved NDCs. We have a chance to correct that. But the issue then becomes when you have a mismatch of finance and strategy, how do you rectify that? And so I'll come back to that. Let me just complete where I see the importance and what we need to kind of really internalize why LTSs are important to investing and to ensure that they're well studied, devolved and designed. The other thing is with all the argument generally is that public finance is not going to cut it. There has to be private sector financing to cover the cost of transitioning all regions, all regions, Africa included towards the net-to-zero and climate-resilient trajectory. So in the private sector has to have a long-term signal to be incentivized to increase confidence on the pricing of risks around innovations that are necessary towards the climate world. Especially in emerging markets because if you take Africa, the bulk of its infrastructure is yet to be built. That means without a long-term strategy you can't have really clarity on how much is going to be needed at the sector level later on at the economy level. So there's going to be need to create that confidence for the private sector flows to have the confidence to invest. And lastly, with the long-term strategies that what we've seen clearly is the countries that have clear long-term path and pipeline that accompany them, of course the big economies on the continent have attracted more international climate finance or let's say the GCF, I think colleagues in Zambia mentioned that that oftentimes even with the 50-50 break you're going to find that most of that is going to the economies that already have the right infrastructure, the right policies in place that anchor these interventions. They have the right pipeline, they have the right investor mix that makes it easier for the asset owners to now invest. And so what we need to look at is then how do you risk it? How do you create that enabling environment that there is an LTS for a country like Gambia that speaks to what the capital owners want to hear both private and public. And so to answer your question is the lack of long-term finance which is very traditional in the financial sector and that's something we are trying to work on that. Climate finance, the finance from the global funds like GCF and Jeff are not going to be enough. They need to reach out to the real owners of assets and this is also much with the growing collisions, global collisions around net zero alliances what is happening is those alliances will need a new markets to invest. And so this is really an opportunity for emerging markets like our continents to present funding opportunities for these resources that are now looking for new home because they have targets in their commitments towards net zero. I'll end with an example on the Great Green Wall Initiative. So the Great Green Wall is an initiative to green the entire across Africa, the entire Sahara Desert over 8,000 kilometers from Senegal to Djibouti, the entire belt of it. And that was started in 2007 and it's long-term financing required is about $33 billion to achieve the ambitions of the Great Green Wall by 2030. So that gives clarity that if you have financing for five years, that is not gonna create the 8,000 kilometers needed for the Great Green Wall Initiative. And so there has to be through both domestic and foreign capital find a mechanism to the risk as both private sector resources that enable for these results of such transformative initiatives like the Great Green Wall Initiative to be achieved. And so how that can happen is through financing from multilateral development banks such as the Southern World Bank around this call, but largely from also the private sector, a lot of those net zero alliances that have trillions, $9 trillion assets under management, that is the kind of space that we need to be engaging. So let me stop here and happy to discuss this later. Thank you. Thank you so much, Davina. Well, that's a very positive story that you are finding ways to de-risk for the domestic and foreign investors. And I guess this is really central to beginning to solve these longer-term opportunities. But when a country's indebted, we still need to find ways of making it a more attractive proposition. So, Neha, could we ask you the same question? If most funding windows are for around five years and yet we know the transformation that's needed requires longer-term investments. And we heard about that from Climate and Development Ministerial in March. How can we begin to support countries achieve their 30-year vision that they set out in their long-term strategies? Neha, please. Thank you. Thank you, Claire, for that question. And also, I think a lot has been covered by the speakers so far. And some of my points would be sort of reinforcing what we've heard already. But going back to the fundamental point raised earlier in the discussions with our speakers from the countries, so climate change is not just a challenge of mitigation or adaptation. We're talking about a fundamental systemic risk to growth, to development. It's as much about, you know, growth and development and planetary health and our human existence. So if we look at that from that perspective, then all systems need to be aligned to be contributing towards climate action. And there is strong, you know, commitment and increasing ambition from countries for climate action, but still the progress, as you highlighted, towards decarbonization and resilience development has still been slow. And as we heard, you know, the key fundamental challenges we're hearing is access and availability to finance and, of course, the social aspect of it inclusive climate action that contributes to inclusive development. So from where we work together with the countries, what we're seeing is mainstreaming climate change as countries are working towards in terms of their economy-wide whole-of-society approach, not just incremental sectoral actions, but looking at their national planning, their medium-term budget planning and long-term development plans is very critical. And this is important, not just to align public finance sources and external development finance, but also sending the right market signal for the financial sector, for the investors to make sure, you know, those flows are aligned with climate priorities, national development priorities, which are not different, especially in the context of in LDCs, they're not different from climate priorities. And that's very important. So in the recent years, what we've seen is the dialogue has been shifting from just the mitigation and adaptation priorities to how climate poses a risk, physical risks and transition risks to the economy. And that narrative has really helped resonate with the financial system of the economy. So we're talking about ministries of finance. We're talking about national planning agencies, central banks, investors that further, you know, send the right signal for the financial system and financial architecture working domestically and externally. So going back in terms of how, you know, these short-term windows and long-term finance need to be aligned with priorities, with climate priorities from the institution side as well, just like countries are working on embedding this in their economic planning priorities from the financial institution side as well. This means embedding this into the DNA of how the institution operates and delivers finance. For example, let's say in case of development banks, as World Bank is an example, climate is part of how we are working on our development priorities. The World Bank recognizes climate poses a risk to its twin objectives of ending extreme poverty and shared prosperity. Now, when you start with that and then have climate change action plan as part of our engagement, both the supply side when making resources available and the delivery side working with countries on engagement, both prioritize climate. So climate action automatically starts emerging as priority aligned with development action. So that's how we're, and this commitment and ambition is increasing with the institutional commitment as well. Now, and what's most important is that sense the signals both from where, from as the finances, as the resources are being allocated for to be channels through the development banks and also how development banks deliver this. So whether in terms of leveraging development bank resources or helping countries leverage their scarce public finance resources to attract more private sector finance because we heard public finance is not enough. Scares public resources with competing development priorities and climate events that further contribute and aggravate the challenge of debt sustainability. That puts countries in a cycle where we're still trying to tackle the climate challenge with limited resources we have with multiple challenges. So with that we're working with countries on how climate action materializes of course at the sectoral level but at the same time how the financial system can be aligned to send the right signals to crowd in more external finance, climate finance, external climate finance again availability is limited but we need to use it strategically to crowd in more of the external finance. And I guess my last point in terms of wrapping up this response would be countries are working really hard on developing their long-term strategies. And what we need to make sure is these are not developed just as a part of the climate process climate negotiations process but they truly are adopted and embedded as part of their national planning and national planning activities, economic planning activities and for especially sending the signals to the financial system and the markets. Thank you, Neha. Okay, so we need to crowd in the private investment is what we're hearing again. And again, I'm nervous that this is harder for the LDCs and for some other countries but let's go now to Cynthia from the World Resources Institute. How would you consider, what are the actions that we can be taking to ensure that the least long-term strategies are more than just a report and how can access to finance play into that? Thanks for the question. Very happy to be on this panel and happy to have to follow on some of the previous discussions. I agree wholeheartedly with some of the points Neha just made around, this is not an obligation. This is something that's an invitation to countries to undertake. And I think it's really important to think about how the country can get the most out of this process. And I really liked Davina's points as well about using long-term strategies as a means to reconcile or address some of the mismatch between finance and financial planning and climate strategy. And I think it's quite important that the long-term strategies are embedded into the country context and the policy-making setting and really set the strong linkages to near-term implementation so that you're able to use the strategy as a tool to guide decisions that are being made today. And just from a practical perspective, I think some of these linkages can be formed in a few different ways during the planning preparation of a long-term strategy, including by setting very clear interim milestones, building strong linkages to the country's nationally determined contribution and existing national development plans. In some cases, there may be advantages to preparing those types of documents in tandem where you're actually looking at development priorities for economic development planning at the same time as considering longer-term climate objectives. Taking the time to really recognize and think through critical sectors where rapid implementation will be needed and setting sectoral targets and milestones within your long-term strategy is another way. And then also being very clear on priority actions that can be taken early on and making sure those are part of your long-term strategy. It's also important to help ensure the document itself is robust and can live on beyond the government administration that's drafting it. I think that's one critical way to ensure it doesn't just remain a report sitting on a shelf. And in our analysis of some of the long-term strategies that have been prepared to date, there are a few insights that we have identified. The first being that some degree of legal status, if possible, can really strengthen a long-term strategy and this can be simply a legal requirement to prepare or revise a strategy or you're also seeing a growing number of countries formally adopting their long-term quantitative emission reduction targets or their net zero targets. And I think it's important for countries that are in a position to do so to really consider embedding some of this in legal format because it does impose obligations on current and future governments to pursue policies that are in line with the target. Also during the planning process, robust and transparent stakeholder engagement cannot be underscored enough and really engaging all of the critical stakeholders during the design phase for the long-term strategy but also throughout the timeframe for implementation. It's really important to make sure that you're taking into consideration different voices to build a unified view. What the long-term future is for the country and bringing stakeholders into the process to discuss solutions to really difficult challenges. The transformations that need to occur are not going to be easy. There are going to be many people that may be negatively impacted by certain types of transitions and it's important that they're part of the conversation. Not only to build support for the vision but ultimately to build support for the policy decisions that have to align with that vision. And then just another point to note as well, we're seeing a lot of countries are including very specific points in their long-term strategies around monitoring review and revision. It's just a way to help keep the document relevant and ensuring that you have an opportunity to revisit as new developments occur. And I think just on a final note on your point around access to finance and the relevance of finance, I think what we've seen in many cases is that a lot of these processes, these steps that you would need to take to make sure that your long-term strategy is robust are not always considered when you're actually developing a short-term plan to produce a long-term strategy or you're securing a small grant to produce a long-term strategy. And it's really critical that some of these aspects are considered. It's perhaps easier to secure financial support to do a technical analysis and develop scenarios and pathways or exploratory modeling to really figure out how the country can transition on a low emissions development path to 2050. But it's also important to consider as part of that process, a way to ensure you have robust stakeholder engagement and you have the financial support to ensure all of the government participants can fully engage. Thank you. Thank you so much, Cynthia. There's really sage advice there. I think this point particularly, I mean, the legal status obviously has huge value in keeping the attention through changing governments. But that role of stakeholder engagement to resolve trade-offs, I think has to be one of the most fundamental reasons for doing a long-term strategy that can get that sort of cross-party buy-in, cross-society buy-in in the first place. So let's go back now to the Gambia. I'd really like to hear more from Ishtiou and Alpha. Given the challenges you set out and given the responses you've heard to date, what do you think the international community can do to support your efforts in the Gambia? What improvements, what changes would you look for? Ishtiou, would you like to take the floor? Thank you once again, Claire. I would first like to begin by emphasizing the Gambia-strung commitment to meeting the Paris Agreement Goal. And this has been demonstrated by the force and second NDCs that the country had formulated. Both of which are rated as Paris Agreement compliant. In addition to these two documents, a strategic program for climate resilience has been and as well as long-term climate mission have been developed. And currently we are working on a long-term climate strategy. Aside from the development of these documents, the government is committed to providing local resources to address the climate crisis and where possible, had contracted loans to address climate change. Examples of which include a big nourishment project to combat sea-level rise because we had been greatly affected by sea-level rise and even now. So government contracted a $20 million loan from the African Development Bank to push the sea backward. But it seems that solution was adapted on malpractice because the issue is coming back again. Besides that as well, most recently, a renewable energy project of 142 million euros was contracted as well. Majority of which about 65 million was loaned from the European Investment Bank. And this was meant to power 1,000 public schools and 100 public health centers, both of which I believe will and may contribute to the country's death distress in some way. So therefore, I believe the Gambia has been trying to do its fair share to combat climate change, but international support has been insufficient or inadequate to address our objectives as a result in answering your question. I would like to see an increase in resources to assist the Gambia in transitioning to a low emission and climate resilient development. I'll pause here and allow Alfa to give some input. Thank you. Thank you. It's a very clear message indeed. No problem. The need for grants and the need for resources. Please, have we saw Alfa? Seems to have dropped off my screen. Yeah, thank you, Claire. And then thank you, Esatou, for those additional information to the question. First, I just want to answer first, the first second part of the first question, where we are in the information of our LTS. To answer that, we have progressed in well with the support from the 2050 parts way. We have recruited the national coordinator who's working in support from the ministry and myself to finalize the governor's trope of the LTS. And now we are working to finalize the TOR for the consultant, either firm or an individual. And then also once that one is finalized, then we will finalize in the work plan with all the costs. We have just submitted to the 2050 part way the first two drafts, and we are waiting for their inputs of inputs and contribution to it so that we can finalize it. It is expected to last for six months to be completed and submitted to government. And now coming back to your second question, I think the improved funding from the donor communities and what we anticipate accessible from the donor community is one first as the panelists from the African Development Bank. We need to develop our LTS with details, explanation of how we want it to be implemented. And then not only of how we want it to be implemented, but maybe breaking it in stages in every 10 years or five years, what we want to achieve, that is the milestone and the cost of those milestones and how we can achieve them. And secondly, to improve funding and the window for funding is to align our LTS with our development initiative, like the vision and also the national development plan. The vision is already completed and submitted to government for improvement. And the LTS is expected to implement, to provide guidance for the implementation of the vision. And on which we will also anticipate and anticipate support for the financing community. And also, we will also want their flexibility and acknowledging that our development needs is also linked to climate development needs. They are all together. And for that flexibility, it will help us to improve on the funding and also implement more on our climate pledges. And as it has already indicated, our commitment to implement an ambitious and robust NDC, we put almost on the chart in the world and we will need funding to implement it. And we have engaged the donor community in the country here as to how they can assist us implement the NDC. So as I said, in short, is to engage the donor community for the more and also the donor community to be flexible in providing funding for the implementation of our climate investment as in our SPCR, which is also a blueprint document which outlined the climate investment for the country, which also linked to the climate change policy. And having all those influence, I think we have created the enabling environment to allow climate investment in this country with donor funding. One aspect is clear that with the renewables, I think we can engage the private sector because for them it's dollar in and dollar out and what is the profit. But for adaptation of the CNER building, it's going to be very difficult to engage the private sector because adaptation is very difficult to make profit on adaptation projects or adaptation initiative. Knowing that we may also have loss and damages, you may invest on adaptation and tomorrow one event can come disaster and it will be there. So that is why it is difficult to engage private sector in adaptation initiative or the CNER building. So just to add what I said, apart from the concept protection that is the CNER initiative, we are working further with the UNDP on one of our streams that allow daily water to flow into the ocean, which is blocked by debris and also sedimentation is to drain it and open it. And we are working with the World Bank on that project and we explore the quota stream development project. And with that, I think I can stop here for further questions that I can elaborate on. Back to Clara. Thank you so much, Alba. And some really important points you're making there around the need for flexibility of the finance to build your domestic enabling environment and the ways in which you can attract private investors for some areas, but not others particularly hard of adaptation or loss and damage. So, Davina, can I come to you now again and ask from the perspective of the African Development Bank when these countries are trying to put into place the institutional arrangements that they need, whether that's a new institution or strengthening an existing one, to begin to drive the policies around the long-term strategies. How can development partners support building this homegrown capability? I'm gonna have to ask you to be really brief. Each of you now is gonna have to speak very briefly. So, we've got some time for some of the questions that are coming in. Yeah. Thanks, Clara. Indeed, I'll try to be brief and start with however good the LTSS might be for the institutional framework is at a local level. The funder, the source of capital has to do some aligning in a way that then the intentional on investment. Indeed, as we talk of long-term finance, through the boardrooms of our institutions, there has to be intention that that's the direction their capital has to flow. And so as MDBs, we've committed to alignment what we call the six building blocks on Paris alignment. And all those six building blocks, we are intentional across on what we are doing. One of them, building block four, specifically talks of supporting national strategies, including NAPS, NDCs and LTSS. So that is a directive around moving finance for that. But with that is also a building block six, which looks in ones around changing our systems to enable financing to such programs and strategies. Because what often happens is our cooperation agreements are still a decade old. So you will not find climate-related interventions funded. What you find is an infrastructure program, education program and all. And so any environment or any related financing is left for grant and technical assistance, which are always more pockets of money. So first, we become very intentional about funding these strategies because they are very influential on the flow of finance. Two is we've also moved very clearly on LTSS and have now working on principles of financing LTSS. We have eight proposed principles that include one thing that was mentioned by the Gambian team around capacity, enhancing local capacity. Indeed, I think it was also too, the lady from Gambia mentioned a maladaptation case of the project that was involved in. Let me just say that, why is this? I'm not disputing that it may be a maladaptation. It all comes down to the capacities. Is your feasibility capacity good enough? Are your pre-project analytics good enough? So we are still lacking data. So oftentimes our infrastructures are bugled on not very good data. So among our principles as MDBs is to deal in that area, especially where it is lacking. So we have principles that look at ownership, that look at inclusiveness, because you have a situation where stakeholders are mapped in certain categories of the population and what you did. We are also looking at the converges of climate and SDGs, because these are not two different processes, and also looking at the whole long-term trajectory. So yeah, these will come out at COP and those will be our direction of documents around financing health uses. So yeah. Great, that sounds great. Looking forward to seeing those, Davina. I'm super curious now. They sound quite similar to the principles for local-led adaptations. So hopefully there's some alignment there as well. Great, that's exciting. Neha, from the perspective of the World Bank, the same question to you. How can the international community get better at building the nationally-owned home-grown institutions that these countries need to deliver their long-term strategies? Thanks, Claire. I think in responding to this question, I'll take a similar approach as done previously. Action needs to happen both internally in the institutions supporting these efforts and then also as we are delivering through our country programs to country engagement. And again, climate needs to be built in not just as part of actions, but also as part of institutional capacity and technical support to build that internal capacity in countries. So some examples of how this is envisioned in working out from an internal institutional perspective, for example, at the World Bank, as Davina was mentioning, country programs, these are designed for MDBs for engagement in different countries. These are grounded on foundations of solid analytics on economic and growth priorities for the countries, social priorities for the countries, what the bank is doing now. And they have introduced a core country climate and development assessment, which is called the country climate and development report, which is similar to the poverty assessment, the macroeconomic assessment of the country, which makes sure that all of these three are embedded together and are used intrinsically in designing country engagement programs. So climate is not an add-on incremental issue that is being brought on in terms of project design, but fundamentally embedded in programs. Now, taking this to implementation, of course, Cynthia also highlighted this earlier, there are a range of technical assistance programs and grant funding associated with that that's available to support countries or training for capacity building. And as I was mentioning, at sectoral level that has advanced very well in the past few years, but recently there's more concerted efforts to build that capacity into financial sector international planning agencies, ministries of finance. So coalition of finance ministers, for example, is one of those examples where bringing in ministers of finance who are working on these subjects and mainstreaming climate change as part of national planning. Similarly, so those are examples of technical assistance working with different actors of the country of the system to embed climate systematically. Similarly, in terms of implementation-related financing, that's where of course we embed this as part of any of our projects that we are working on. Not just, it's not just because it's an institutional priority, but it's very clear that the development objectives of most projects will not be met or be threatened because of climate impact or due to transition risks that the country space. And last but not the least is policy support and budgetary support that comes as part of our policy lending to countries where countries as these, as countries are developing their updated indices and long-term strategies and embedding them into their national planning, national development plans as these go through cabinet approvals and are adopted for implementation. There are instruments that support these policy actions to budgetary support for countries. So those are some examples that I wanted to share today. Thank you so much, Neha. And yes, I think I will look very exciting that you're now doing a climate and development report for each country. I wasn't aware of that. So that's really is in advance. And great to hear the different ways in which you're supporting the institutional, strengthening the institutions in country. There's a lot of very rich ideas there. Cynthia, for time, I'm going to come straight to you. In your experience, have countries been including financing needs for delivering their long-term strategies? To what extent do you think these long-term strategies should be costed? Any thoughts from your side? Thanks for the question. And just to know, I mean, it's still early days. There are only around 33 long-term strategies and most of them are from developed countries. But what we're seeing in the strategies that have been submitted so far is that there are essentially three general approaches that countries are taking to consider finance in the implementation of their strategies. The first point being, many countries are using their strategies as an inward-looking device. We've found several strategies that actually discuss the financing needs to support a just transition. The European Union references their just transition mechanism, including facilitating 100 billion euros to support effective implementation. Costa Rica also intends to create a job sector plan and funding strategy to support sectors most impacted by the transition. The second approach is more outward-looking. Several countries do highlight the need for additional international finance. Some are more general than others in the extent of the finance required, but it is definitely something that countries are beginning to talk about. And the third approach is more informational. Several parties do indicate in their long-term strategies that they want to use the strategy as a guide for future investment toward a cleaner and more sustainable future. So many countries are really specifying how the targets and the contents of their strategies should be able to inform either development plans or preparing future investment strategies or simply to be used as a signal to the private sector. So I think what we're seeing is that there is some degree of costing of scenarios and pathways. And I think it's rather important for countries to consider this early on and set the expectation that finance does need to be directed or redirected toward the implementation of the strategy but also take into account the significant benefits of transformative climate action and really set the narrative there. Thank you. Thank you so much. Well, okay, so we've now got quite a few questions have come from the floor and I feel that we should begin to tackle them. We have a few detailed ones and a few bigger picture ones. So I think what I'm going to do is where they're obviously directed at somebody direct them to them. But if you want to jump in on an answer, please do. So the first one is for it or two from Prof JV. Do you have any report and link on your experience on financing for Gambia since 2014? And what would be the transitional strategy from 2030 to 2050? What is the disaster risk reduction strategy through 2050 in the Gambia? So basically just asking you how will your disaster, your development and your long-term vision come together, I think. Esa too. Thank you, Claire. And thank you, Professor for that question. I can't remember, I'm sorry. With regards to the first question, yes. We have some reports, mainly policy briefs. To support climate change financing in the Gambia, the first one had highlighted some policy pointers which included establishing a climate change fund and creating a climate change budget code. After upon publishing that policy brief which was published by IIAID, the country, I'm proud to say now have established a climate change fund which is yet to be operational, but it has established one and it was identified as something that the country needs in our national climate change policy. And the budget code is also seen as something that the country needs in order to extract local resources to address climate change. So it's yet, the process has started. I think concept nodes have been developed to ensure that we have this and capacity is needed at the Ministry of Finance as well to enable us to have a climate change budget code. So maybe we would need to learn from experience of, I guess, Nepal has a climate change budget code. So we would need to learn experience from those countries. With regards to his second question, he talked about disaster risk reduction strategy by 2050. What I know is the office that's responsible for disaster risk reduction strategy or the agency has developed, had developed one, I think in 2019 also, but that strategy is up to 2030 because they try to link it to the standard framework which is up to 2030. So it's not up to 2050. But in that policy, key hazards which are frequent flooding that usually happens in the Gambia and now we're seeing wind breaks happening frequently as well. These are droughts as well because with that agency they are participating in a disaster risk transfer mechanism with the African Development Bank to insure the country in case we have a drought. So they are implementing those as well. So for now, that strategy is trying to address these emerging issues. For example, the windbreaker I have talked about in recently or this year, we had a very serious one that had never happened before and we unfortunately lost 10 lives. So these policies, climate, disaster risk reduction trust we is trying to address these major climate hazards or climate events in the Gambia. So I'll stop that. I hope I answered his question. Thank you. Thank you so much, Husti. Yeah, can I also clarify? Can I clarify something, please? Yeah, in addition to what she said, I would just want to add that we are also thinking of having a climate change act because if you have all the policies and the courts, you need an act even for the climate change to function legally or efficiency, you need an act to back it up. And if you need green bonds or emission charges, you need a climate change act to enforce that. So we are also thinking around to have a climate change act. Secondly, we also have a disaster action plans at regional level. So at the region, we have a coordinator. They have what we call multi-disciplinary working groups which are also at regional level and each coordinator has an action plan for the region on which to implement the disaster action plans. So these are the two things that I want to add to what she has said. Husti. Thank you so much. And Alfa, the next question, I was thinking of directing to you, but others also feel free to jump in. And it's a question from Zakir in Bangladesh. What might be the role of local people in planning and action for long-term climate resilience trustees? So the role of local people in this? Well, as we are about to develop our long-term strategy, what we will do is a nationwide consultation and which will involve local people and make sure that their thoughts and their ideas and their initiative are included in the long-term strategy. And the NAPS also, which we are about to develop, also we ensure that their needs and aspirations are also taken care of in the NAPS formulation. So in short, as we are going to develop, do these two important documents, we will consult as much as possible local people to ensure that their needs and their aspirations are highlighted and included in this long-term strategy. And that's going to be their role in it. They have to have a very key and important role in the formulation of these documents. I hope I answered his question. That's great. Thank you very much, Alfa. If anyone else wants to respond, just click your video on so that I know that you're interested in the question. I just wanted actually on that one, whether there was a connection with the LDC initiative for effective adaptation and resilience, which the Gambia is also a front-runner in, which is about getting finance down to the local level behind communities and priorities. I don't know if it's to Alfa whether you've got any views on that. Yeah, thank you for that. Second question, we are a bit behind in the LTC and in the life they are initiative because we are very team on the ground with myself and assistant with all other works and activities on the ground like this one. And now the LTS is consuming most of our time. But in implementing like they are, because adaptation implementation is actually should happen at the community level. And so that they are involved in the life they are. We have already had a first meeting on the life they are of the five stakeholders and also for local friends across the country. But we are yet to set the plans of itself which will include also up to regional level so that they will know what life they are is. And when it comes to implementation, they'll be active in the implementation of the life they are activities. But to you. Thank you so much. Okay, so the next question is something. Oh yes, please, apologies. All right. Yeah, I just wanted to add a point that Alfa's point is valid but I think we have made some few progress because the climate change policy and which has highlighted the need for us to have a climate change fund which we have already established when it's operational. That fund in the climate change policy had directed or provided the emphasis that 50% of the resources that would be received by the fund would be directed to local communities. So I think that would support the Life Air Initiative which is talking about having 70% of the funds directed to local communities. So I think as a country we would need to see if we need to revise that to 70% or we want to maintain the 50% that was in our vision. That's what I wanted to add. Thank you. Thanks, thank you too. Yeah, I can see that that be an important area to discuss. Okay, so the next question is around the role of blended finance in facilitating long-term strategy delivery. I wonder if my colleagues from the banks would like to jump in on this one. Keep in mind, of course, the challenges of getting private finance investment interested in the adaptation side. Do you see blended finance as an important role for these strategies financing? Neha. Thanks Claire. I think that's a very important point in area that starting to get more traction. First of all, they're stepping back on finance itself. Since we started out the discussion on how scarce public finances, by itself we wouldn't be able to meet the objective. So blending it with different types of resources to make it more attractive for investments is certainly going to be important. And when we were talking about private finance, it's not just private finance, discrete investments at project level but we're looking at a market, shifting the market, sending the signal. So it becomes more easier to have a more long-term vision and long-term financing available. Now blended finance both in terms of taking concessional resources from climate and blending it with other development finance resources or more importantly, taking concessional resources to actually leverage external market finance is going to be important. So the idea basically is to create an additional stream of financing that is not just limited to governments own resources and or the scarce development resources that countries are tapping into. And that's where there are instruments on carbon financing, carbon pricing instruments that countries are looking into more actively to create that additional stream of revenues to complement and to also help alleviate some of the fiscal pressures that they are facing internally within their economy. Similarly, tapping into markets as we heard from Alpha regarding going to markets through green bonds, sustainable finance access that requires an underpinning of policy and enabling environment which needs to be set up to help tap into those markets. So certainly there is no doubt in the long run given the scarce public resources and scarce development finance and increasing demands for these resources we will need to complement these. Now the challenge in identifying what works in different country contexts given whether there's carbon intensive actors, carbon intensive players that could be contributing to a carbon pricing scheme or there are more external investors to be brought in through financial markets that would be that have the appetite and interest to invest in these green investments. Thank you. Thank you, Neha. Zemina, have you got anything you want to add to? Yes, and just to say that as Neha has described the process that I wanted to just give some examples of where it has worked jointly between a South Wild Bank and other multi-MDBs and bilateral funds were able to create the world's first concentrated solar plant in Morocco, Wazizat. That was made possible because of blended finance. So the opportunities that blended finance brings on board is to de-risk innovation. And even closer to as recent as last year when we had the COVID pandemic situation because of the liquidity strays on some of the private sector operations once the bank came up with solutions we have a facility called the Sustainable Energy Fund for Africa that kind of looks at solutions for the SME or middle-level capital, private operators. And so there was a blended finance called Off-Rid COVID-19 Solutions. And what that does was to provide a 20 million facility to fund managers that were championing that then create some easiness of the balance sheets of the investors because of the COVID impact. So what I'm trying to say, there are solutions, tailored interventions as financial products that then alleviate especially around risks of innovation. Thank you. Thank you, Doreenah, it was really, really helpful. So the next question is from Jill Matthews and a challenging one for us all. Are we tackling the problem from the wrong end? Is the market-based economic system not actually what's been driving the challenges we've been facing and should we be charging tax for using the natural environment? So charging companies and corporates for their use of the natural environment. Again, I feel this might be best answered by my colleagues in the banks. Davina, do you want to have a go at that first? Yeah, I think maybe just to allay Matthews' fears is that the private, sorry, the civil society has been very active. Just like during the tobacco campaigns, there has been a lot of putting the spotlight where it is desired. We've seen what they did, the negative publicity around coal and that has driven diversities that you see a really trend of diversities from fossil fuels. We saw what they did with large hydros and it is a matter of what's this momentum from the awareness campaign, then you start to see investors because ultimately these things are happening because there's a source of financing. And once the funders are targeted because there's a loss of capital, there's a lot of stranded assets that come with these kind of interventions. And so where there has been targeted negative publicity, especially from the campaigners, we've seen a shift and that shift moves capital. It's not enough, but it's a positive signal. That's what I can say, thank you. Thank you. Anyone else want to come in on that last question? No. Okay, so then I think we're coming towards the end. I don't know if there's any other further questions coming in, but my handy supporter hasn't put any in. So what I might do then is just begin to wrap up. So first of all, I think we should all be congratulating the Gambia having the only 1.5 degree aligned NDC. And they're hugely impressive long-term vision, which is the start of them setting out their long-term strategy. And by the sounds of that alpha further leadership with a potential climate change act coming down the road. And it was really heartening to hear the intentions from the African Development Bank and the World Bank around aligning and supporting these long-term strategies, getting behind the domestic capability, building that capability across government. I'm really curious to see these eight principles for financing long-term strategies and look forward to the cup greatly to be able to see what those are about and how they align with some of the other approaches to trying to get climate finance to really work for the poorest countries. I think having a climate and development assessment by the World Bank for each country is also an important innovation. We also heard some really important lessons from other long-term strategies. And Cynthia's sort of insights from actually how to give these long-term strategies real legal positioning in order to ensure that they remain being updated and continue to have a life. The value of these for beginning to think through the financing and to signal to the private sector, we heard about from a few speakers also. And we also were hearing about the need for increased grant finance, for greater grant climate finance, but the limits of development finance being very real, how different countries are looking at creating new streams through the carbon markets or elsewhere, green bonds to leverage greater investment. And the role of that rather limited public finance to de-risk innovation through blended finance approaches. So altogether, it felt a very rich discussion. I'd really like to thank my panelists again for their time. It's to Kamara from the Gambia, Alpha Jala also from the Gambia, Davina from the African Development Bank, Neha from the World Bank, and Cynthia from World Resources Institute. We're really grateful for your time today. It was a really exciting discussion. Thank you all very much indeed.