As we have already recognized that the financial system can play a major role in contributing to the low-carbon transition and green recovery from COVID-19.

How to align the national financial system with these transitions and international best practices?

The Green Finance Platform developed the Sustainable Finance Diagnostic Toolkit to support countries assess the current state of financial system and develop a sustainable finance roadmap - set of key measures and actions.

The first step is to understand the importance of your financial system in national sustainable development outcome and how sustainable finance is relevant in the national context.
Countries will have different starting points. For example, one of the drivers of sustainable finance in India is rooted by the necessity to finance one of the most ambitious global renewable energy programmes.

Check out toolkit and find about necessary steps to unlock sustainable finance.

Only 10 days left to participate in the Call for Papers & Speakers for the World Sustainable Energy Days from 28 February – 3 March 2023 in Wels/Austria. Energy transition = Energy security!

This is the focus of the 2023 edition of the event.

Get involved! Share your work with the worldwide sustainable energy community! Submit your paper or propose a speaker.

Deadline for submissions is 10 October 2022. Find out more online at www.wsed.at/call.

Officially launched today, the Sustainable Finance Diagnostic Toolkit is now available!

The Green Finance Platform and the International Network of Financial Centres for Sustainability (FC4S) launch the Sustainable Finance Diagnostic Toolkit to facilitate the development of a national sustainable finance roadmap.

The toolkit is a 10-step questionnaire that provides practical guidance for policymakers to improve their understanding of actions to enhance sustainable finance mobilization in a country.

Through the toolkit, countries will be able to surface necessary information and measures to unlock sustainable finance, which will feed into the development of national, or potentially regional, sustainable finance roadmaps.

This toolkit is developed and managed by the Green Finance Platform as part of the Global Environment Facility-funded #AligningFinancePolicies project.

Youths amplifying Pacific voices at UN meeting to vote YES for climate justice.

Pacific Islands Students Fighting Climate Change (PISFCC) are asking the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to provide an advisory opinion to strengthen human rights, intergenerational equity and climate justice in the Paris Agreement.

Calling on global leaders to vote yes at the UNGA 77 resolution - which would enable requesting an ICJ advisory opinion - the PISFCC sailed on a ‘Vaka’ (a traditional canoe) with First Nations people and climate activists down the New York East River.

“Not only would the ICJ be an illegal circuit breaker for global negotiations, but it would also be a major confidence booster for the work of activists all over the world.”

"Girls, women worst climate victims in Bangladesh:
Experts recommend ensuring gender integration into the climate action plan"

Funny how this new article states what was the main conclusion of my master dissertation, written fours years ago, focused on Bangladesh climate adaptation policies. A point worth noting is that it is the "how" gender is included that makes the difference, not including it per se.

If included properly, climate change action plans have the potential to tackle gender discrimination, addressing unequal gender structures.

Let's hope this new climate plan will take up the challenge.

Are you or do you know creative 14-30 year olds with something to say about the climate crisis?

#CreateCOP27 is an annual art contest designed to raise awareness about the important climate change-related decisions that need to be taken by leaders at the UN Climate Change Conference, COP27 being held in Egypt in November 2022.

Submissions due by 16 October. Find out more about how to enter and the contest prizes.

A Plea to the UN for International Competition for Global Cooling

It is necessary to honor those countries that are working to save the world and to encourage others to protect the environment. I propose that the United Nations establish a climate dashboard for international competitions to reduce CO2 emissions.
The dashboard would contain information about how much progress each member state has made toward meeting the Paris Agreement temperature target. The data should be updated regularly, for example, at every season. The dashboard would be available on the Internet so that everyone can see which nations are committing suicide and which are saving humanity.
An annual report would be published on each member state's efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The report ranks each member's contribution to net-zero emissions, such as each country's carbon footprint per capita, each country's CO2 emissions reduction per capita as a percentage of the global reduction per capita, etc. The countries that make outstanding contributions will be invited to share their success stories with the world at the COP meetings.
I believe that such climate competitions will significantly raise public awareness of the climate crisis and encourage people to act to save their future.
Nations can also create similar dashboards with the data from their provinces, cities, regions, and even big polluters, to show who are the good, the bad and the ugly.

Resilient Cities With Nature-based Solutions

Climate Resilient Water Supply

In the conditions of the energy crisis, energy-saving and environmentally friendly technologies are becoming increasingly important. For the aluminum industry, the GreenAlum project has developed technologies that reduce electricity consumption by 30% and prevent huge carbon dioxide emissions. The second area of technology is the processing of a huge amount of accumulated alumina production waste. The technology allows you to get huge benefits from obtaining raw materials for the production of iron, titanium, rare earth materials.