Glasgow: As delegates gathered in Glasgow for the second day of COP26 on Tuesday, real economy leaders join heads on stage to launch new partnerships that will catalyze finance and climate solutions in Africa and Small Island Developing States, and help half a billion farmers to implement regenerative farming practices this decade.
The cluster of new public-private partnerships, which unite captains of industry, finance and philanthropy with leading voices from civil society, such as Xiye Bastida and Selina Leem, address acute climate vulnerabilities countries face while accelerating rates of decarbonisation and resilience building.
The mobilization of action and scaling-up of finance for these geographies is critical to advancing the climate action agenda.
This climate action agenda will be at the centre of COP26 and is led by two UN High-Level Climate Champions -- Nigel Topping and Gonzalo MuAoz -- to drive breakthroughs across regions and sectors to limit global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius and build resilience of 4bn people to the impacts of climate change.
As well as the new partnerships, the Champions also announce the latest members of their Race to Zero campaign, which now counts 5,235 businesses, 67 regions, 441 financial institutions, 1,039 educational institutions and 52 healthcare institutions -- all committed to contributing their fair share of halving global emissions by 2030.
Of particular note, Mayor Eric Garcetti (C40 Chair) reports that 1,049 cities have joined the campaign under 'Cities Race to Zero'.
Gonzalo MuAoz said: "This is the decisive decade -- the decade to deliver on the promise of Paris and the prospect of a better, safer, fairer, healthier future for everyone."
Nigel Topping said: "To keep 1.5 degrees alive, we must cut global emissions five times faster than we have over the last decade, which requires transformative action that simultaneously builds resilience, and puts the most vulnerable communities at the heart of the conversation."
The first partnership is the Africa Green Finance Coalition (AGFC) -- a continent-wide collaboration -- to spur the trillions of green investment needed to transform Africa's economy by accelerating green finance policy and regulatory reform to attract private capital at scale, both from international and domestic investors.
Secondly, Brian Moynihan, CEO of Bank of America, announced a multi-jurisdictional and multi-asset financing facility to scale public and private finance for climate solutions and resilient infrastructure in Small Island Developing States (SIDS) in the Caribbean.
This financing facility aims to invest in approximately 800 megawatts of new wind, solar and EV charging infrastructure projects in Caribbean Small Island Developing States.
This initiative, which will invest in shovel-ready projects, has the potential to generate game-changing impact towards accelerating clean energy transition and deployment in the region.
The third and final partnership is Regen10, a bold new platform to achieve regenerative food systems this decade across 50 per cent of world food production.
Regen10 will work with over 500 million farmers to apply regenerative production methods, while simultaneously ensuring roughly $60bn per year is deployed to finance the transition to reverse nature loss in line with the Paris Agreement.
These initiatives kick-off a full programme of thematic events at COP26 -- convened High-Level Climate Champions -- starting with Finance Day on November 3 and concluding with Cities, Regions and the Built Environment next week on November 11.
