Experts are gathering this week in Rabat, Morocco, to discuss how finance can be mobilised for infrastructure that is able to withstand the impacts of climate change, which include more frequent and severe storms and flooding.
The event holds from Wednesday, September 6 to Thursday, September 7, 2017.
According to observers, investing in climate resilience across all sectors and industries makes good business sense as it can prevent inefficiencies and costly retrofitting of infrastructure while reducing the vulnerability of societies.
The two-day event of the Standing Committee on Finance (SCF) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) brings together around 120 participants from around the world, including experts and practitioners from local and central governments, multilateral development banks, UN organisations, infrastructure project developers, and the financial sector including the insurance industry.
The meeting will feature presentations by leading researchers and practitioners as well as diverse case studies on climate-resilient infrastructure and its financing, ranging from the Lake Bizerte rehabilitation project in Tunisia and water adaptation measures in the housing sector in Jamaica to hydropower resilience in Tajikistan.
Participants will explore how to improve risk information and assessment so that they can feed the information into infrastructure investment decisions and policy making processes.
The mandate of the SCF is to assist the Conference of Parties (COP) in exercising its functions with respect to the financial mechanism of the Convention in terms of:
- Improving coherence and coordination in the delivery of climate change financing;
- Rationalisation of the financial mechanism;
- Mobilisation of financial resources; and
- Measurement, reporting and verification of support provided to developing country Parties.
It was established by the COP at its 16th session (COP16 – in 2010 in Cancun, Mexico) by decision 1/CP.16. Its roles and functions were further defined and its composition and working modalities elaborated on at COP17 (in 2011 in Durban, South Africa).
