Speech: Launch of the CVF Global Parliamentary Group

Excellencies, esteemed colleagues,

The clock is ticking. Climate change is now accelerating and this spells economic and financial disruption and destruction while leaving behind devastation for the world’s most climate vulnerable developing countries.

Climate change worsens what is already an increasingly difficult cost of capital challenges and it accentuates the fact that the maturity of private capital to vulnerable countries is also in short supply.

Vulnerable country parliaments must challenge and complement the executive departments to dramatically raise climate ambition. It is time to take a far more active role in helping steer our people away from the dire threats of the climate emergency and move closer and closer towards climate prosperous pathways. Let us rise together. If countries historically responsible for the climate crisis won’t act with urgency, we must act in concert to compel them to take responsibility. We must, in parallel, set a path for ourselves to secure a low-carbon and climate resilient future.

We must begin with enabling the CVF’s call for a Climate Emergency Pact including annual ambition raising, until we safeguard the 1.5 degrees Celsius limit of the Paris Agreement, and the V20 call for a Delivery Plan of at least $100 billion per year in climate finance or $500 billion until 2024. It is important that ambition is complemented by the right economic and financial support structures. This is why it is critical we support the V20 Group of Finance Ministers to mobilize climate finance and de-risking financial flows to our economies.

The proposed CVF Global Parliamentary Group lends further impetus to climate action and establishes a dedicated work plan of legislative activities into the future that will help to drive Paris Agreement implementation, Sustainable Development Goals, the Sendai Framework for disaster risk reduction delivery, and planetary prosperity through Climate Prosperity Plans.

The four activity areas for the CVF Global Parliamentary Group include:

One: best practices to support active collaboration towards ambitious and effective climate action in line with the Climate Prosperity agenda.

Two: knowledge resources to commission analysis that generates an inventory of good

practices and legislation that form a useful body of resources to support CVF parliamentarians to take action within member legislatures.

Three: legislative agenda to work together on a unified political “Manifesto” of CVF parliamentarians including developing a shared legislative framework to guide key legislative measures to be taken by CVF parliaments in order to effectively pursue the CVF “Planetary Prosperity” agenda. We can also pilot special motions that are critical to issues such as a high share of renewable energy, and making accessible climate and disaster risk financing, among others. We have partners in this space including the Global Renewables Congress, UNDRR and InsuResilience Global Partnership;

Four: international outreach to engage in dialogue and collaborative actions with parliaments and parliamentarians from outside the member states of the CVF, in order to encourage ambitious climate response and robust international partnership for action.

Excellencies, esteemed colleagues,

Hard fought development gains and productivity will continue to be undermined or reversed if the 1.5-degree limit of the Paris Agreement is breached.

We need unprecedented global collaboration. Let us take this global step together through the CVF Global Parliamentary Group.

Thank you.