 I'm Andrew Norton, I'm Director of IAED and it's my pleasure to welcome you, a particular pleasure because we've got some of the audience here in person, IRL in real life which is great. And yeah, this is the first event I think we've done with IKI, the Independent Commission for Aid Impact. So that's also a real first for us and we're delighted to be here. I also want to say a special welcome to our virtual audience, almost 200 people registered to join us online and we're really delighted that we can extend this discussion to people all over the world. That's been one of the real pluses of lockdown is learning to do that and learning how easy it is to do that. Thank you for being part of the discussion today, both people here and people online and for those of you online, please leave your comments in the chat box and questions in the Q&A panel. You're in the safe hands of my colleague Georgina Diaz who is in the Zoom room and will support the online participation. So welcome to the online audience. This is our first fully hybrid event, so we'd appreciate your patience if we need to iron out any technical glitches as we go through, but very much looking forward to it. Please note we are recording this event and it's on the record, not under Chatham House Room. So a few words just to set the scene, we're talking about aligning aid with the Paris Agreement with a focus on the UK's official development assistance. The IPCC report, well the two parts of AR6, Assessment Report 6, have both reaffirmed how incredibly urgent the need is to strengthen action on climate change in all its dimensions in all ways. Indigenous peoples, those living in informal settlements, pastoralists, small holder farmers, citizens of small island states are all on the front line of the negative impacts and these will ramp up dramatically, certainly if warming exceeds the more ambitious Paris target of 1.5 degrees of anthropogenic warning over pre-industrial. So it is worth saying a little bit just about those two reports, Working Group One on the science and Working Group Two on the human impacts and adaptation. Perhaps the report on the science is particularly in the news, I'm sure many of you well have seen the reports on the extraordinary temperature and anomalies in the poles which have been picked up, which are really incredible and off the scale and of course that will have reverberating impacts around the world so increasingly it looks as if impacts are strong out for every fraction of warming, certainly than the scientific community had hoped three or four years ago. And Working Group Two outlines the implications for people around the world and particularly those who did least to create climate crisis in the poorest countries and again it's a very striking report and I recommend you all to look at it if you haven't yet. And climate finance of course is a key part of the picture, we're needed on a scale that can meaningfully help people to build resilience and to adapt as well as to help countries to take forward their own ambitions and mitigation. We work a lot with the least developed countries group and they are very passionate about mitigation as well as about adaptation and they want to play their own role in being part of the solution in that area as well. And it's fair to say that Spotlight has been on UK aid around this particularly following the budget cuts in official development assistance and also COP 26 hosted by the UK which was well I think on that the UK did a really good job of delivering something functional under incredibly challenging circumstances so congratulations to the team that did that. And we're all still waiting for the UK's international development strategy which has been expected for a while and we hope will be out soon and is referenced in this report as a key recommendation to sort of drive forward Alliance with the Paris Agreement in UK aid. So it's a good moment to have this discussion now and this is very important for IAD as well. A few personal words as I mentioned we've worked with the least developed countries for over 20 years in the climate negotiations and we also have a deep commitment in relation to climate finance and to aid to delivering money where it matters in relation to climate finance reaching communities on the front line for adaptation for loss and damage and for mitigation. So we're here today to explore what progress has been made on this agenda where the opportunities and barriers are and what the implications are for developing countries climate resilience and adaptation in this agenda about aligning aid with the Paris Agreement. Let me now introduce the panel. We're delighted to be joined by Tamsin Barton the Chief Commissioner of the Independent Commissioner for Aid Impact the organisation that led this rapid view of UK aid alignment with the Paris Agreement and Tamsin is going to introduce the report and give us the top lines from that report and also the key recommendations that are contained within it. Then we're really delighted to have Val Nanandram with us climate and environment director at FCDO. Thanks very much for joining us Val it's great to have you here who we hope can share insights into the progress and priorities on this agenda and also say a few words in so far as it's possible about the upcoming international development strategy. And we have joining us online we're delighted to have Dr Kevin Keriyuki. Dr Keriyuki is the Vice President for Power, Energy, Climate and Green Growth at the African Development Bank Group. He's a chartered electrical engineer with over 30 years of experience in climate change and green growth, strategic energy partnerships, energy financial solutions, policy and regulation. So it's really important I think to have the perspective of a multilateral development bank working on this agenda and how they see the Paris Agreement alignment with development aid how they see that agenda and thank you so much Dr Keriyuki for joining us. My colleague Claire Shakia who's the Director of the Climate Group at IID has sadly had to pull out she's not well but we're delighted to have a fantastic deputy IID's Ebony Holland with us and thanks very much for stepping in a short notice Ebony. Ebony has led our work at IID throughout the super year of the two COPs the UNFCCC COP26 and the Yet to Happen Convention on Biodiversity CBD 15 incoming still upcoming. And Ebony has specialized particularly on how to link those agendas through nature-based solutions to the climate crisis that also protect the planet's precious by diversity and a particular area of interest for Ebony as for IID is the role that climate finance can play in creating inclusive and equitable delivery mechanisms that enable communities at the front line to determine their own actions for poverty for climate and for the nature loss crisis as well and we're looking forward to hearing Ebony's perspective on aid and insights into climate and biodiversity finance more generally. So to kick us off I'd like to hand over to Tamsin to share what the IKI rapid review tells us about the UK's progress on aligning aid with the Paris Agreement and what were the key recommendations and how should they be prioritized thank you Tamsin. Well thanks very much Andy it's absolutely brilliant to have this first IKI plus IID and it's really exciting for us to have our first hybrid event. We hope this is going to be the best of both worlds I mean we wouldn't be able to have Dr. Kariuki and I'm sure you'll all agree that that is really going to add a lot to our discussions today. On the other hand those of you who are here in person are going to enjoy once again that informal exchange which is so important for our collaboration in future. So really really glad to be here and to have such wonderful fellow panelists. So let me tell you a bit about our report and I want to just go back to the context that Andy was talking about which is the IPCC report. I think it's been pretty hard to hear the message of that report through all the noise of these turbulent times that we're living in but I know that those of you online and those of you here will have been listening and you all heard that clear message that any delay and we're going to miss that rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a liveable and sustainable future for all. Unfortunately that launch was of course overshadowed by the Russia-Ukraine crisis but that crisis does actually shine a light on those important those dangerous if you like dependencies that we have the dependence on fossil fuels and the Russia-Ukraine crisis should actually accelerate our urgency in addressing climate change and sustainability. The implications for food security and vulnerability to climate change are still emerging. So more than ever from that climate perspective there's the need for a just transition to renewable energy rather than a reversion to fossil fuels. So it's against this backdrop that we look at the context where the world is falling well short of delivering the amount of finance necessary and of course at Glasgow I'm sure most of you will have noted that the Glasgow Climate Pact noted with deep regret the developed countries missing the hundred billion dollar goal by 2020. That's important but what we're looking at here is not just the failure to scale up climate finance but the really important scaling down of finance flows that continue to support inconsistent actions with the climate agreement with the Paris Climate Agreement. What's embedded in that agreement and what we're looking at today is making finance flows consistent with low emission climate resilient development pathways. So the UK actually made a commitment that its official development assistance would be aligned with the Paris Agreement in this respect back in June 2019. At that time most of the focus was the context of the UK's green finance strategy positioning the UK as an important centre of green finance but for those looking at official development assistance this commitment did not go unnoticed and it was exactly that commitment that got us in Aikai thinking what can we do because our job is to scrutinise official development assistance provided by the UK. We try and help the parliamentary committee in that process and to provide the information so that the government can be held to account. Whenever it makes a commitment on anything then that makes our ears prick up and we think maybe this is something we need to do a report on. So that was the background to us deciding to do this review. We made it a rapid review and the reason for that was that we wanted to look at it early. So we just focused really on the relevance and coherence of the approach. We recognised that it was early days to look at effectiveness in a shift such as this which really requires a lot of change. So what did we find? We found that this was a really important commitment made. It actually mattered but in the context of the urgency we've just been talking about a much more ambitious approach and acceleration of action was needed to reflect the scale and importance of the task ahead. It did take a very long time from that commitment being made in June 2019 to bringing the tools into play. So it took until March 2021 for the fossil fuel policy to be brought in and then for all the tools to apply to new business cases in the FCDO it took until April 2021. A point at which actually not many new business cases were coming in because again as mentioned by Andy we've seen a process of reducing budgets and therefore fewer new projects coming through. So we said that was slow. So having said that focusing on what is being done we generally thought that the tools brought in do reflect emerging best practice and there isn't as yet a sort of canon of best practice on how to do this. So the four tools that the FCDO is using are the climate risk assessment, shadow carbon pricing, the fossil fuel policy as mentioned, and alignment with country partners own climate mitigation and adaptation plans. So on the fossil fuel policy it was clear that that was something there was a lot I'm sure some of you were involved in those consultations. There was a lot of consultation across the government which wasn't the case for all the tools. But one of the things that worried us about these tools even though they were good is there did seem to be too many exemptions or caveats to them so that they aren't as mandatory as they might appear to be. And that's a journey we want to see the government going on. We can understand not everything can be done right away but we want to see progress from where we are at the moment. So if you take one of these tools the shadow carbon price it is complicated. It's resource intensive. We understand that they might not be a requirement to do it everywhere but 70% of programs not doing it that does begin to raise questions as to the extent to which it's really going to prove a tool for change. Another very striking feature in terms of the materiality is so much of UK aid is going through either multilateral channels or increasingly through British international investments which until I think it's April the 1st perhaps it's the 6th is still CDC but I'm trying to adjust to that name so I'm sure you are already. And the UK has to rely on those institutions own efforts and their own definitions and their own tools. So we are wondering what the plan is really in relation to how that would change. So we do think that these tools well they do reflect good practice in screening out but there remains the question about positive selection purposefully directing projects in that direction of low emission climate resident development in all aid not just in climate finance and particularly we think that's important because it could be seen as very much a northern agenda a conditionality by donors if you like on aid limiting the options available to developing country partners and we all know why that wouldn't be fair. So I guess one of the things that worried us most when we looked at what was happening was that's the responsibility for this commitment it was taken for the whole of government but actually really we could only see two departments focused on it FCDO and we have felt today and base the department for business energy and industrial strategy which was very engaged in some areas like that's carbon pricing. It had to be said that from our interviews with other departments it wasn't wasn't clear the extent to which they felt committed to the agenda so that that was a worry for us and we could see that the lines of reporting weren't clear you know if there's a commitment you need to have some process by which somebody is telling somebody we've achieved X or Y which is moving us towards that so that was one of the other things that that bothered us and then something that's important to those of you working in civil society in particular transparency about the metrics how will it be clear how will it be visible whether the commitments are being followed and what are the metrics for it that's something that we're hoping to see in particular in in the international development strategy once it appears and then a third a third very key issue which has perhaps grown since the merger between FCO and DFID although there may be opportunities in that merger because in the run up to COP there were so many people engaged in the climate agenda there is valuable capacity there so we raised questions based on what we heard from our interviewees about whether there's really enough capacity of sufficient expertise and capability to apply all these complicated tools across all the programs we could certainly see when we were talking to the overseas network that they they were worried as to how they were going to be able to do it with limited capacity and remember there's been a commitment to double climate finance so that's already asking twice as much to be done from these experts and now they're also meant to be looking at all of aid and ensure that its paths align so that does it does set an ambitious agenda for building capacity and capability last but not least and I'm particularly looking forward to hearing from Dr Kariyuki on this but we found that the UK had effectively influenced the multilateral development banks it'll be really good to hear the extent to which that coincided with an agenda within them and I won't spoil what's what comes out in our report looking at IDA on the World Bank but we felt in this review we could see definite influence there having said that this that still doesn't mean that everything that the UK wanted was achieved because if you take lending through multilaterals as with British international investment if that lending is indirect going through intermediaries it doesn't at the moment seem to be any way of ensuring that that's Paris aligned so there's an agenda there so what next is the question for today how far will the UK go UK still the COP president till Egypt takes over later this year UK is is still a leader in providing finance to support developing countries to respond and adapt and it's taken on this commitment so this commitment we feel is one of the areas that's really going to be a test of credibility in this year with the UK as leader international eyes are going to be on the UK so we were interested to read what the government's response was you're going to hear the latest response from well in a minute but the official response that's gone to the committee the government said it's working to progress time-bound milestones for the Paris alignment across all ODA spending departments so this is we what we want to know is whether that's actually happening and we hope it's been happening through the process of developing the international development strategy which we hope is imminently going to be out it for us the most important thing is the milestones on that journey so that there is some kind of accountability and openness to scrutiny on whether this commitment is being kept to or not that's the first thing second thing the government has said if there's more we can do across government to accelerate implementation of this commitment within established accountability structures they naturally resisted any suggestion that accountability arrangements could be changed each minister is responsible for their own department we we know that we accept that but we still think there's more they can do so interested to hear about that last third this learning and development effort the capacity and capability so the government said they're developing a broader learning and development offer for all officials to embed Paris alignment approaches in HMGs Her Majesty's government's international work we think that will be critical to ensure the UK's alignment goals pursued across all aid programming and it's not just a ring-fenced climate issue so that's what our report has put the focus on looking forward to all the speakers but hopefully I've provided a good introduction to what Val is going to say to provide all the latest answers to all those pointed questions from iKai thank you thank you Tamsen a really fantastic introduction really great to hear the iKai focus on accountability milestones benchmarks also this question of the strategic approach when that you know when do we see that because obviously a lot of these questions depend on that and also around capacity and instruments as well so really fascinating introduction thank you hi everyone and thank you to Tamsen and iKai for the for the report I think we accepted or partially accepted all of your recommendations so you know it is just in the spirit of iKai kind of also not just holding us to account but helping us improve you know thank you Tamsen during the team and also IID for hosting this event thank you I just wanted to say two points up front and Tamsen you kind of mentioned some of the contextual things and I just wanted to pick up on two of those really the first is to kind of just recognize we're having this event in the midst of a global crisis and that's that's obvious it's shaping geopolitics partnerships political bandwidth and yeah as I say you know we all know that but it's important to kind of recognize that here because when we talk about Paris alignment we're not doing that in a vacuum we're doing it in a constantly shifting global context right and that shapes the art of the possible both positively and negatively and I'll try and say a bit about that but I think it is it's really worth kind of saying that global context is important for these conversations and then the second again Tamsen picking up your point there is no agreed international definition for Paris alignment we are sort of collectively as an international community and in the private sector everybody is trying to evolve what's possible what the art what what the kind of policy trade-offs are in some of these issues and there are trade-offs and Tamsen alluded to some so yeah I just want to say there's no kind of fixed benchmark to which we can hold ourselves we're all trying to get to the same journey together so so let me just say a bit about those the four tools that we're using and kind of how we're thinking about evolving them the first is the fossil fuels policy so this came out as Tamsen said March last year now so we've had a bit of time to see how this is you know the choices that's surfacing whether that's in the mdb boards in domestic support packages and so on so we're seeing you know some of those choices surfacing up I would say kind of going forward obviously and Tamsen you alluded to this the Russia-Ukraine crisis is putting a new prism on energy and I think it's helpful net and the prime minister put out an op-ed last week I think where he really kind of framed the energy response here about accelerating and turbo charging the transition to renewables you know this isn't just about 1.5 anymore it's also about energy independence and reducing reliance on other countries and I think you know that that is going to accelerate some of these conversations and I'm happy to kind of go into a bit more of that in in the Q&A. The second tool is carbon pricing and absolutely we have at the moment focused the application of a shadow carbon price on the highest emitting sectors in the highest emitting countries so we have exempted fragile states for example from the application of a shadow carbon price and you know we've been doing this coming up for a year now and what we want to do is to really learn how teams are implementing these shadow carbon prices and what impact that's having on choices what we absolutely don't want to do and very much as the iKai report highlighted is get to a place where the application of Paris alignment tools limits development choices and so we need to be kind of quite measured in how we roll out some of these tools so that we don't create perverse kind of effects so absolutely we're committed to continually kind of raising the bar on that but we want to do that in a really measured way where we're understanding the implications of each of those kind of tools so anyway direction of travel very much in the spirit of trying to extend carbon pricing. The third tool we have is around alignment with national climate plans so whether that's the NDCs or the national adaptation plans we want to make sure development programming is aligned to climate plans and there's there's a course that sort of you know that just makes obvious sense at one level I guess but there is a and I think this is highlighted in the iKai report but that's not enough right we know that the current set of NDCs don't get us to the temperature goal that we need to get to even if you were to take into account ambitious net zero targets for the you know 2050s and beyond you get at most optimistic 1.8 degrees so we know we need to push NDCs further so and the Glasgow Climate Act gives us the ratchet this year right we have the ratchet opportunity this year to drive further ambition in NDCs so I just wanted to elevate the kind of our approach on the NDC tool it's not just about making sure that you know in-country development programming is aligned to national plans it's also about raising ambition in those plans whether that's the NDC or the map I should say and a big big push this year is going to be on the clean and green initiative which was launched by the G7 last year and sort of the flagship was the South African Just Energy Transition Partnership that was launched at Glasgow which is about kind of the international community coming together around countries energy transition plans and we want to kind of see that piloted in a few more countries this year so that just goes to the point about trying to have positive investments that Tomsen was mentioning there. The fourth tool is climate risk assurance so and I think working group two I mean I mean that is a hard read I think anyone you know who's working in development has to be thinking about the climate science and how your future proofing our development interventions I think and I'll come to this in the second the capability to kind of translate climate science into implications for your development programming is not straightforward that's something you know it's not easy to do we have teams of people kind of working on that on both sides of that but it's a journey that we're on and we need to kind of get to a point where it is easier to make that connection between the science and the impacts. So those are the four tools let me quickly just say something about some of the other areas we're thinking about firstly international engagement at the same time as kind of doing our own sort of internal policies we are continuing to push the international system including our colleagues in the MDBs and in all of our kind of that any funding arrangement we have with other partners we're trying to continue to push Paris alignment there I would also just flag that it's not just about Paris alignment it's about nature and nature proofing and nature positive so Andy you mentioned CBD COP coming up so Kunming and the Global Biodiversity Framework how we make sure Oda is also aligned to that is another big event this year sorry and then I was just going to say some of the challenges I can see you're good at talking. I just had a note that Dr Kariuki needs to leave shortly. Let me stop. I was right for him for a moment yeah no apologies for that Dr Kariuki we're delighted to be with us. Please do go ahead. I think a key thing here is also to get a sense of how the African Development Bank sees the Paris alignment agenda having had if you like engagement in this area actually since for quite a while since 2017 thank you. Thank you very much and good for the floor. I would like to first of all thank IEK and Oikai for inviting the African Development Bank to this event and share perspectives and insights on how we are working with our client countries for Paris alignment goals and agreement goals accordingly let me start with the development during the last year which makes 2021 a watershed year for alignment of operations with the Paris alignment goals this is because the developers I'm going to talk about create an enabling environment that will facilitate Paris alignment firstly in October 2021 the bank approved and are then to formally preclude new core investments henceforth simultaneously the board also approved new climate change and growth policy and strategy for the period 2021 to 2030 these provide a framework for operationalizing the Paris alignment goals within two specific timeframes firstly full alignment with building blocks on mitigation adaptation and climate finance by corp by December 2023 and secondly full alignment with the remaining building blocks that is on client on country or client level alignment joint reporting and internal alignment by December 2025 these developments will underpin all bank operations and activities in respect of Paris alignment accordingly the bank is developing a detailed roadmap an action plan to fully operationalize Paris alignment across the board based on change management principles to ensure that we carry everyone along specifically regarding our client countries or regional member countries or RMCs as you refer to them the alignment to the goals of the Paris agreement is fundamental to our collective goal of zero net zero emissions and climate resilient development hence the need to review the progress of RMC's in the Paris alignment journey and the role of the bank it's playing is important starting with corp 26 recommendation that all countries are required to submit their new or updated NDCs LTS and adaptation plans ahead of corp 27 which is only eight months away it is not worthy that whereas all the 54 African countries have submitted their first NDCs 39 have submitted revised or updated NDCs but a mere three have submitted long-term strategies although Nigeria has established a long-term vision while only eight countries have submitted their national adaptation plans this performance is largely due to limited capacity to develop adaptation measures and adequate inadequate systems to collect analyze and predict adaptation impact scenarios these capacity gaps need to be bridged urgently to enable countries to comprehensively communicate their strategies targets priorities as well as mitigation and adaptation needs in a timely manner through these instruments that is NDCs naps and LTSs with a view to accessing climate finance for the accelerated transitioning to low green house gas emission climate resilient and sustainable development economic pathways this is why our new climate change and green road policy and strategy not only makes a concrete commitment to support African countries to formulate these plans but also provides a clear blueprint for the actualizing their national party agreement commitments it is in this context that the bank has developed a 21 million proposal to support African countries fast track their party agreement commitments in line with the Glasgow climate park outcomes this proposal builds on our experience in supporting NDC developing in countries such as Uganda, Southomian Princip, Namibia, Liberia and Cameroon the outcomes from this effort will also inform collection of data and preparation of technical assessment component ahead of COP 20 sorry of 2023 party agreement global stock take under the UNFCCC on climate change moreover the bank is currently developing a robust monitoring evaluation reporting and learning system which will serve as a results-based reporting and accountability framework of its Paris alignment objectives this framework aims to ensure adequate reporting and accountability of all our climate actions including our interventions to help African countries to enhance their ambitions and commitments towards implementation implementing the Paris agreement the foregoing is additional to the work of the bank in hosting and coordinating the Africa NDC hub which is a collaborative platform of 21 partner institutions including IID your organization Andrew, UN agencies UNECA, UNFCCC, FAO, WWF to name but a few all supporting African countries in the delivery of their party commitments and foster long-term climate actions through the African NDC hub the bank hopes to leverage partner institutions to scale up delivery of party commitments and raise ambition of original member countries finally the bank has selected climate change as one of the focus areas in the Africa Development Fund replenishment process that is just starting as one of our most important tools for mobilizing resources at scale ADF presents a tremendous opportunity to support the efforts by African countries to enhance their climate ambitions under the Paris agreement from the foregoing I am sure that you appreciate the bank's endeavors and indeed challenges to foster alignment to the Paris agreement we therefore welcome the international communities to join hands and support the bank in building the requisite enabling environments and capacity at country level to ensure timely realization of the Paris agreement yes very very briefly regarding the one of the questions that was raised on how we have performed I want to say that through UK concepts through UK shareholding as a shareholder 40% of bank approvals to date are committed to classified as climate finance including over 50% actually 27% in 2021 as of the adaptation I think you'll be pleased to note that the African Development Bank is the only MDB that has actually exceeded parity between climate mitigation and adaptation finance I think I'll stop there and I thank you very much Dr. Kerry UK thank you so much that was really valuable contribution and great to hear and really emphasizes a special role for the African Development Bank in supporting African countries to lead on this agenda to lead on the Paris alignment agenda so thank you so much for joining us and also many thanks to the African Development Bank for your leadership as well on the adaptation finance agenda which has been incredibly important Dr. Kerry UK I think you have to leave leave us soon but I understand one of your colleagues will be joining us to the Q&A yes I'm actually very sorry actually my driver is actually he's already started the engine because we are supposed to be heading to the airport so Alamdu is actually a sector sorry subject matter expert so he will be more than unable to deputize me in the Q&A thank you very much yes I hope you've done this your flight for sure but it's wonderful thank you very much thank you so much um no I can't really be that I just I guess if I may just one last point picking up on something hands and said riches and about capacity and capability to do this stuff and just to really sort of hear that and say we have heard it and I recognize it's a challenge because this stuff is not easy so we are investing quite heavily in how we build particularly capability so you know with the people we have how do we build our capability to do this I'll stop there okay look thank you very much indeed well it's great to have that response and I'm sure there are a lot of points that people will come back to but also really good to hear about how this agenda is moving forward within FCDO so thank you very much indeed and the last panelist is Ebony so Ebony we're I think a number of questions in your area it'd be great if you could reflect on what you've heard from the panelists and how it links to broader climate finance issues how can we raise the ambition level and what the donors need to do beyond alignment is that a transformational enough goal thank you Emy thanks Andy for that very simple question everyone it's a really great pleasure to be here both for the folk styling in virtually and also for everyone here in the room it's fantastic to be back in person and also my pleasure to be here on behalf of Claire who was very sad to miss this but hopefully I can step in adequately for her I've got two points to make in relation to this question Andy but the first point I want to make and really reinforce is that what we're talking about here which is aligning ODA with the goals of the Paris Agreement is no small task it's a really big task and I think all panelists so far have touched on that and it's important that we don't treat this as an issue that we can just kind of tweak around the edges and that's fine actually what we're talking about in some ways is really looking at the design or even redesign of the development system as a whole and so I think it's really important that we bear that in mind and and we've all kind of touched on the journey that this needs to go on over time and I think starting that journey and what the UK is doing is really fantastic so far I do also think that the upcoming international development strategy is a really critical lever for achieving this for bringing closer alignment between ODA and the Paris Agreement and really you know it needs to prioritize climate change and it needs to prioritize nature as well and I'll get onto that a little bit shortly particularly in the context of the UK as the ongoing COP President and particularly off the back of the ACC report which really stresses that we have a closing window for climate action but really the two points I wanted to make actually pick up on a couple of points that both Thames and Anvel have already mentioned I guess you know reflecting on what donors or climate finance providers need to do beyond just committing to alignment I think one of the critical points here is looking at the role of intermediaries you know these big international NGOs and other organizations that that often are responsible for or you know largely deliver the development assistance from the UK and other donor countries I think it's really important that we recognize that the UK's ability to align ODA with the Paris Agreement is often very closely connected to how these organizations deliver their support and so I think what will be really fantastic is if the UK and perhaps other climate finance providing countries got together and looked at what expectations would be needed to ensure that these organizations do deliver on on this alignment and I think as you open that joy I think that also lends itself quite nicely to having a conversation around what the role of these organizations are moving forward particularly as there is a stronger push to move to more business unusual practices that take a more bottom-up approach to designing some of these and implementing some of these actions and I think that's quite an important part of this story and yeah particularly looking at those roles is very critical. The second point I want to make is very much sort of looking at what climate finance would do to support alignment with ODA alignment to the Paris Agreement and there's very much links to also the review from the international development committee last year and actually a lot of reports are starting to look at this right now but really how you can structure how you can leverage climate finance to support this alignment and there are a number of ways that you can do that the first is to look at how you can support and incubate innovation how climate finance can really support that missing middle that we call we use in IED to look at how you can support local level and also local institutions but also the national institutions as well to adjust and test and trial what processes work in terms of bringing alignment to these issues but also how you can build capabilities and trust as well and so I think allowing or leveraging climate finance to support that will be really critical. The other points I think really here around really facilitating meaningful engagement with lower income countries and Indigenous peoples and local communities as well this is particularly important for ensuring that local context local knowledge local culture traditional knowledge is embedded in the design and implementation and this of course links closely to other issues that we work on a lot as an organization around vertically integrating finance delivery mechanisms so you've got that connection between the local up to the national regional and international so that you're able to feed the knowledge and the expectations and the priorities of local communities up into the international system as well and the final point I make on this point we may have more time in the Q&A if we get there is that really climate finance needs to shift to providing much longer term much more patient and much more predictable financing and this is a call that comes through in activities like the principles for locally led adaptation and other actors are calling for this as well you know shifting from much shorter term funding cycles of three to five years and really moving into a state of seven plus years and I think that allows that innovation to happen that local engagement to be much more meaningful to build trust to strengthen national and local institutions and I think that in itself is really fundamental to aligning ODA to the Paris Agreement also I'll stop there. Thanks very much indeed Ebony. We'll go out to questions shortly but just before we do Val you in your introductory remarks as Tenzin did as well referred to the crisis around the Russian invasion of Ukraine and this being obviously a massively important and consequential kind of geopolitical moment and you mentioned a way in which that could reinforce focus on climate through obviously fossil fuel dependence and the ways in which you know that has fed into the origins of the conflict but there are also obviously clear links that it will distract attention create also other priorities even push certain geographies to the fore in the way that people think about aid so I just wanted to come back to you on that in terms of the Paris Agreement how do you see this moment and to put it in slightly more positive way what can the community as a whole do to keep attention on the key elements of the Paris Agreement? You don't ask that. Well no I mean I said first of all I do think the point about energy is huge right we know the contribution energy makes to emissions where emissions so how this moment is a catalyst for the you know common objective of getting off fossil fuels I think is really important and should be the focus I think you know we also need to accept this is a crisis like none other I have experienced in in my professional life and we're still seeing that unfold and things are changing very quickly and could change and so it's quite hard to predict how it will all come out I think that you know I remember going into COP26 we were very conscious of geopolitics as a risk to what we wanted to achieve at COP26 and then that time it was a different set of geopolitical considerations and so I think going into COP27 you also have to kind of we also have to be thinking through what this might mean for how what we might be able to secure there and how different parties will come and want to work together or not and so I think it's hard to predict what that will be but we need to be thinking about it now absolutely as a as a risk factor to this agenda. Okay thanks very much Val let me open it up firstly to questions in the room and then we'll get questions from the online audience would anyone like to go first yes please introduce yourself Oh hang on a minute there's a there's a microphone on its way I didn't give enough time to get to you. I'm Francis I'm from Calford and obviously in the next couple of days we're hearing rumours that Liz Truss is going to announce a new international development strategy there was a piece in the telegraph I think last week which suggested that that strategy will be moving away from climate so it's really interesting to hear what you were saying because it seems like what you're outlining is priorities isn't quite what seems to be the priority that's potentially going to come out of this strategy and I suppose I just wondered what you feel like that direction really means for the work that the UK government is doing not only to tackle climate change here but you know abroad and obviously as the CDC moves into the II it's very clear that we're moving away from tackling global poverty towards kind of investment in what seems to be more middle-income countries actually than you know the standard low-income countries that we've seen before so it'd be good to get your I suppose I know you can't say it but what's your thoughts about that direction and why at this critical moment especially with the report that's just come out that we would even consider removed like this thanks so um thank you um so I'm not I'm not sort of at liberty to kind of say what the international during the strategy is going to cover of course because it's not not yet been sort of released what I would say is of course the integrated review which is the UK government's foreign policy kind of strategy puts climate and biodiversity as the number one foreign international priority we of course are very publicly committed to doubling our international climate finance to 11.6 billion over the next five years and of course we are still the COP president with a set of international obligations through COP 27 so you know there's a lot of building blocks here it's not you know the international development strategy is one part of the government's articulation of its priorities it's a very important part on the development side but of course the tools available to government are very wide so I would just I mean I would just those are all the pillars of our approach and they're all there and they're all kind of very publicly articulated already so I would sort of encourage you to look at those just on on CDC BII they have of course put out their own climate strategy which is a very good one I think so recognizing that they're going through this bigger change the climate strategy is in place and it's a good one and it commits them to Paris alignment to 30% of their investments being kind of climate finance to yeah to a whole suite of things so yeah so I think I'm I'm relatively comfortable that there's a lot of foreign policy building blocks in place that will continue to reaffirm the importance of this agenda thanks very much well any other questions in the room yep John I think we're all a bit out of practice on the mic through to yeah thanks Andy I'm John Carstensen from Mockway Pongall the question I have Belle you you mentioned the admirable increase in in funding for climate efforts but given the constraints on international development funding it probably means that the climate finance will need to pursue multiple objectives at the same time so my question to you is a mix of are the upcoming fcdo programs sufficiently geared towards that transformational change that Ebony was talking about when it still might have to balance some more direct policy achievements in in order to achieve its overall outcome so very much around other programs geared towards the that longer term outcome and secondly could you say a bit about how important you think a mechanism under the climate convention to address loss and damage will be in the future um thanks John um so on transformational so I guess it depends how you define transformational but if you if I think about them in terms of three different ways one is recognizing our money is probably never going to be enough it so investments that you make through odor always need to leverage others uh whether that's private money other donors mgb's domestic resources um so absolutely uh I mean I don't see all the business cases of course because I don't control all of the money ministers do that but um but a key principle has to be leveraged and will be leveraged of other people's resources the other is whether you're trying to generate policy shifts um ideally major policy shifts whether that's on energy or land use or other areas um so I mean one program that is in my area is on the just rule transition so shifting trying to encourage governments to shift their agricultural subsidies so from less environmentally damaging ones to um more positive ones so so using climate programming to try and shift policy I think is another transformational way and then it's also the issues that you might want to focus on I guess so focusing on transformational issues so I mean we've made a lot of announcements at COP about different areas whether that's forestry adaptation and sub-sector work um so yes I absolutely think that and of course climate finance is a ring fence within the odor budget and it's defined it must contribute to the Paris goals so you know although of course we want to try and achieve poverty impacts because it's also odor um and you want to achieve other things with it it does have to meet the climate finance um specifications um loss and damage so I have to be really careful here because of the negotiations context with with loss and damage but undoubtedly I mean I'm really proud of what the Glasgow climate pact achieved on loss and damage it really moved that conversation forward um we of course have there were two two parts to it right there's an operationalizing the Santiago network but then there's also the Glasgow dialogue on loss and damage which will start to I hope have a real world conversation about loss and damage how it's impacting countries and the sorts of um programming that can minimize avert and address loss and damage and and that sort of real world conversation if you like about how as development professionals we think about loss and damage it's a really important one that I'm really keen to engage with um and recognizing that Glasgow has given us the opportunity to have that conversation and I think that's a really good thing thanks very much Phil um let me put a question to Ebony at this point um I mentioned that you work across the two cops across the biodiversity loss and the climate agenda um we and there's our fairly full drafts of the global biodiversity framework that's anticipated to be the main output from Cumming what do you think um action on biodiversity loss can take from this discussion do you think this is a good framing cumming aligned or whatever or do you think there are risks here as well I think there's a lot that biodiversity can learn from this discussion and in fact for those who may also be closely tracking UNFCCC and CBD discussions you will also agree that where biodiversity talks are at the moment is quite similar to where where climate talks were ahead of the Paris Agreement COP and so it's interesting to kind of see the similarities emerge through both discussions although several years apart um I think one of the things that the IK Report points out quite clearly is that there is a fundamental shift towards aligning ODA to climate change and I think a similar story will start to emerge for biodiversity as well um when you look at the the first draft of the global biodiversity framework which again many people say will be the Paris Agreement moment for um biodiversity when it's hopefully gridged later this year um you know there's a target in there target 14 which seeks to and I wrote it down because it was quite long I won't read the whole thing out um but it looks to ensure that parties fully integrate biodiversity into policies programs etc and ensure that all activities and financial flows are aligned with biodiversity values now that language will probably shift a little bit based on the negotiations going on in Geneva this week and last week but nonetheless this idea of alignment is absolutely embedded in the global biodiversity framework and so I think I think what is useful about the IK Report and the movements that are happening in climate change to align or rather for ODA to align to the climate priorities will start to play out and pave the way really for the biodiversity discussions as well um I do also think if I can if I can keep talking just for a moment longer Andy I think there is a lot to unpack around the linkages between um climate and nature finance and ideally bringing them together into climate nature finance and this absolutely gets to your point John around multiple co-benefits um I think at the moment there's a lot of a lot of talk and a lot of really exciting announcements um but we need to really see this kind of play out in practical ways we released some preliminary analysis last week or last month actually about um looking at the extent to which climate adaptation projects from OECD countries going towards least developed countries can support also outcomes for nature and at the moment the data shows that only 10 percent of um that funding for adaptation also supports outcomes for nature and we were pretty shocked I have to say we thought it would be a little bit higher particularly considering least developed countries 45 or 46 of them have nature embedded in the NDC so I think you would expect to see 10 percent not you know be the figure you would hope it would be quite a bit higher um so there's a lot to unpack here but I think the discussions that are going on at the moment around alignment of ODA to climate change are incredibly relevant to biodiversity I think uh you know we can really welcome a lot of these announcements but I think we need to hold our celebrations until we really see this translating into action on the ground. Yeah if I could just follow up really quickly there's also um if you like um a perspective or a style of focus the focus is on indigenous peoples rights and local communities rights rather than just you know areas of protected um protected areas or whatever do you think what do you think needs to happen for that to find its way through in the right kind of way into the practice of ODA? Yeah I mean we could we could um spend a whole 75 minutes just on this question um I think the discussions happening in Geneva at the moment will be really critical in the biodiversity context because it's such a hot topic at the moment um I think there's a lot that could be done I think there needs to be I mean getting to my point about looking at vertical integration of delivery mechanisms you know making sure that um there is the ability for indigenous peoples and local communities to really bring their their cultural awareness their their traditional knowledge their experience their intergenerational experience to um inform design implement climate finance nature finance activities I think that's really critical I don't think that's necessarily strong enough in the global biodiversity framework draft at the moment maybe it'll get kicked a little bit further along in these discussions let's hope so. Thanks very much indeed okay yeah yes um then Sam and then I'll go to the virtual audience. Thanks Andy um it's Ian Mitchell from the Centre for Global Development um so I guess I wanted to ask a question about um um impact and evidence of impact so I think um you know the climate finance is now a pretty dominant form of of aid you know in globally it's sort of a quarter of all flows and in the UK it will certainly be that because it's been protected you know through the cuts um I guess it strikes me that when we've looked at this you know the the evidence the hard evidence on impact you know the high quality evidence and impact is is pretty thin actually and I don't know whether Tamsin wants to comment on this from the the aid impact to review point of perspective but I guess if you look down the road in a couple of years you could be in a position where you know a quarter or a third of the UK aid budget it's being spent on on climate and nature I wonder what we know really about the impact of that money and and the risks if if it turns out well that's not having the impact that we hope it does and I'd be interested in uh particularly Tamsin's view on that maybe was a great great question thanks very much Ian should we take Sam's question as well yeah yeah yeah Sam Vickers death um so the question for me seems to be um alignment to public expenditure with the Paris Agreement and obviously the limitations about where ICI can look at Tamsin you with Oda dispersed across a number of government departments can you comment on leveraging that wider change of public expenditure beyond the the area of of Oda finance um because because that's the bigger question of what we have to shift and I kind of felt as we went to the African Development Bank we've got a broader influencing piece emerging um can Vell and Tamsin talk about that wider leverage of change that we might hope to see here to be aligned to Paris which is not a an a degree you need to remember okay thanks very much Tamsin well thank thank you both for um you know letting Vell off the hook for a moment giving me a go um so so on the first point Ian as I mentioned for this review we did a rapid review and we recognized it was too early to look for impacts but actually not long before we did a full review looking at UK age to tackle deforestation and biodiversity loss and there we deliberately looked at some programs which had quite a long history behind them so that would you would expect to see some evidence of impact and we did find some strong stories there uh and some positive achievements of some of the major programs like the forest markets and governance program which which relating to the wider picture was an intervention in a trade context to tackle illegal logging but in terms of the sort of rigor that I know cgd is known for um what we we couldn't find in government was uh sufficient rigor and a rigorous process on assessing what the impacts in those forest projects had actually been in terms of the voided deforestation for example so they didn't they they had some methods for assessing impact but mostly they were too complicated to operationalize so that didn't add up to the rigorous picture that that you would want to see so one of the areas we asked them to improve on was was impact assessment uh but so I think that's probably as much as I can say on on the related area there's a definitely a road to run and experienced to be gained from others best practice on measuring impact uh in answer to your question Sam I do struggle a bit because it isn't our remit to look beyond ODA um the committee that we feed into has asked that we do broaden our remit beyond ODA for the sort of logical reason that there's quite a lot of finance which is blended uh and and that those boundaries don't sit neatly um so in that forest review for example we only alluded in passing to areas of non-ODA such as trade and you know the new legislation that was coming through because that that isn't our remit but remember as I said at the beginning this commitment came in as just part of that green finance picture which was about aligning all finance flows with the Paris Agreement so there's a you know much bigger picture that's happening which we're looking at a a smaller part and I think as we see more and more blended finance then inevitably iGuy's role will in effect its scrutiny will have an impact on the non-ODA. Thanks very much Samson I think we have a question in from the online audience. Yeah we have a nice challenging question from the online audience which I hope can bring in our AFDB colleague um Al Hamdou who's still on the call there we can't see him just now but I think he'll pop on camera um so Justine Muange asked poverty is a cause and effect is both a cause and effect of resource degradation and climate change poverty is massive and increasing in much of Africa beyond the rhetoric Justine would like to know how the UK and AFDB plan to solve this problem. Welcome. Yes thank you very much my name is Al Hamdou Dorsouma I'm the acting director for climate change and green growth at the AFDB and thanks for the question on poverty it's as rightly mentioned poverty is one of the biggest challenges that Africa is facing and that's actually the result that of the creation of the AFDB to first address poverty across the continent but you all know that poverty is also a major cause of um environmental degradation in most of the African countries because people rely on on on natural capital for their livelihoods and these results in in increased degradation of the natural resources and this also leads to a significant climate impact so there is a link between poverty environment and climate change in general so at the bank one thing we are doing is really mainstream our climate action also natural resource management as part of our development interventions for instance for any project that we are currently designing we are sure that this beyond the poverty reduction effort we need to make sure that those projects are based on sustainability criteria using various tools actually not only the the environmental and social safety tool but also other tools to make sure that poverty reduction does not efforts to reduce poverty does not lead to significant climate impacts and also ensure that climate impacts do not produce more poverty poverty in Africa so I think this is an area of of collaboration that I see um increasing in in the future because as as VP Karuki mentioned we have adopted our new strategy and policy on climate change last year and the main objective of this new framework is to address the two challenges at the same time so that poverty eradication is addressed at the same time we we we we embed climate actions into our development interventions given that we at the African Development Bank consider climate change as a cross cutting issue that needs to be addressed across all of the sector interventions be it in agriculture water resource management infrastructure etc so we we we believe that the the new framework that we adopted last year for the next 10 years provides us with that necessary platform to work together with the UK and other international development partners in order to achieve those challenges two challenges at the same time meaning poverty reduction but also reducing the impact climate impact that most African countries are facing at the same time thank you thank you very much Alhamdulis um that's it I think with the online audience sorry sorry okay good Paul uh good afternoon can you hear me yep yeah thanks for uh for an interesting webinar I have a question I suppose both for uh Mr Ganendron and uh Ms Barton about um broadening out beyond UK aid to seeing how the Paris alignment can be applied to UK foreign policy in general I mean we see the pressure uh for oil for oil given the current crisis uh and how that's affecting our climate goals so I just wanted to see how we can we can you know take this broader challenge of UK foreign policy and broader policy and Paris alignment over thank you brilliant thanks very much that was Paul Steele IED's chief economist joining us online um well um so I think it's a very good question I mean I would say that some of that's already happening the fossil fuel policy for example isn't just about ODA it's about all UK international support so it covers trade promotion so whether our colleagues in posts can work you know how they promote or don't um the fossil fuel sector it covers UK export finance so the fossil fuel policy is already border and I would say you know going into COP it wasn't just a um a development effort that was an entire whole of government effort with the entire diplomatic network mobilized behind those set objectives and as I was saying through that process we built a huge amount of understanding and capability within the global diplomatic and development network on these issues so um the question now is how we uh sort of use that understanding that enthusiasm that set of priorities to really drive this agenda across you know the full um suite of overseas operations and I definitely think that's when we think when I think about Paris alignment I don't just think about it in a narrow development kind of not narrow but in just a development way I do think we kind of think about it across all of our international tools and some will move at different speeds um could I just Sam your question I mean it was a really good one about kind of um wider public finance um yeah it does absolutely and that's why it's sort of made that connection so um if I'm honest I think on on the mitigation and net zero side you're seeing more of that partly because net zero is a whole of society well all of its whole of society but net zero we're kind of clearer about some of the pathways right transport so department of transport are involved buildings buildings are involved energy you know so and then the treasury has also asked for public investments to have a net zero kind of you know is this going to contribute to emissions reduction so I think on that side uh more elements of public finance are being sort of aligned but Paris alignment obviously has mitigation adaptation and finance in article two right so so on the adaptation side I do think there's a bit more to go how we integrate climate resilience and and sort of that into all of public finance I guess that's an area we should think about more um and there's that's happening with the development of our new national adaptation plan which is due to be released next year I think so a lot of that work on the adaptation pathways is now starting to happen thanks very much indeed well um we're getting close to the end now so if there aren't any more online questions um I'd like to ask Tamsin at this point um just for some reflections on the discussion um what more what you think the priorities are what more needs to be done in this area thanks very much Andy and I'm glad you've asked me that question because I think vel has provided more useful answers than I could have done to to Paul and Sam because of the there are the boring limits on our remit because although the committee wants us to do something the government doesn't yet give us the remit and we weren't stray from that whenever you say you only do right I can sense the frustration in your voice but we appreciate that so yeah it reflects us now I think I can be quite straightforward in any way bring us back to the beginning of the discussion was it Francis from Calford uh you were raising the international development strategy so I think I may not have got through my key message on next steps in fact today we were hoping that the strategy would be you know preferably out if not to be absolutely imminent to the point where you might be able to say more about it I think that you know the thing we are looking for more than anything else is something that offers accountability we heard from the African Development Bank all these dates by which they have milestones on the journey towards full Paris alignment and the UK pressed them along with the other MDBs to say when are you going to be Paris aligned so we want to turn that back to the UK and hear a similar story in the new international development strategy so our recommendation was that Paris alignment should be at the heart of the strategy and that within that we'd have those milestones and that specificity and that roadmap so that's what we're looking forward to seeing as soon as as it possibly can happen we recognise absolutely the situation that you're in I mean a lot of decisions are being made very quickly every day there needs to be the the space if you'd like for a considered moment on how what's been happening in Ukraine affects the international development strategy but what we are clearly expecting is that the commitments made in 2019 will be fulfilled and that will be done in an accountable way and I hope that everybody listening today whether in person or online will keep a BDI on that and keep the pressure up but it's been great to hear what the African Development Bank has been doing you know in its own account if you like and the pressure from its shareholders and in response to its climate its clients and not only in response to the UK's pressure but those are my reflections now many many thanks to everybody for your coming to the event for our wonderful hosts our great panelists and I guess back to you and be for the final word is the chair you can finish it off but I ID you know your expertise and bring it back to the lives on the front line indigenous people very much appreciated in this context yeah now just huge thanks to you Tamsin for the initiative to have this huge thanks to Ebony for those really useful and valuable reflections we'll all be hearing a lot more about CBD I think over the next year and the emphasis on that's really important and something that's actually quite high profile within the UK government as well but particularly thank particular thanks to you Val we appreciate this is a difficult moment to speak about a lot of these things but we've really appreciated the openness and the clarity of your answers as well so thank you very much indeed do you want to say anything else at this point no just to thank Tamsin and the iKai team do hold us to account you know we've put those things out in the public domain and it's you know do hold us to account for them and to UND and Ebony for hosting us yep and Juliet as well from that comes to you thanks cheers thanks everyone I think we should be closing thank you