Dear colleagues,

Ahead of our call next week Tuesday, March 9th at 12:00 CET I'm sharing a short update with you all on some relevant matters.

UNFCCC sessions in 2021

The head of the UNFCCC has shared a message following the UNFCCC Bureau meeting on February 25th. It's attached, and key parts are highlighted in yellow.

Of note

• The focus is on ensuring Parties/ countries involvement as opposed to ensuring that all relevant stakeholders e.g. CSOs, can be involved e.g. in making written submissions on relevant issues
• It seems that the mid-year Bonn inter-sessional won't be in person, but instead online and will only cover mandated meetings (the list of mandated items hasn't been shared yet, so I'm not sure if meetings on the review of the UNFCCC financial mechanism will be discussed or not)
• COP organisers are aiming for COP26 in Glasgow, UK to be in person
• There's willingness for non-negotiation sessions e.g. informal consultations, technical expert meetings to be held online, to ensure that progress can be made
• It talks of sessions vs negotiations

I welcome others' views on what this means. There's some speculation from UK CSOs that the UK is not above vaccinating all country delegates to attend COP26, via UK embassies/ High Commissions etc. However, this would entail restrictions on the number of country delegates vaccinated, which would likely limit the amount of country delegates from developing countries, as developed countries are more likely to be able to vaccinate their own delegates to the full amount needed.


IATF Report 2021 - climate finance chapter

Every year the Inter Agency Task Force (IATF) on Financing for Development produces the Financing for Sustainable Development Report (FSDR). The 2021 draft report is here and is 259 pages long.: https://developmentfinance.un.org/2021-financing-sustainable-development-report-preparatory-materials. There's a short chapter on climate finance titled Climate change and disaster risk reduction finance (6 pages long). The document is not for citation or publication.

The CSO FfD Coordination Group will coordinate a collective response to the IATF Report, led by Society for International Development (SID), which will put together a joint CSO submission. After this, a draft response will be circulated on the FfD listserv by SID, which will serve as another opportunity to provide feedback and comments. CSO feedback will be focused on what's missing and on what's worrying from the text, as well as other relevant points.

Is anyone planning on providing feedback on the climate relevant chapter? The deadline for comments is March 12th COB.  

I will add this to the agenda of our next working group next week, and we can discuss it.


Best regards,


Leia

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