UN Climate Change News, 30 March 2022 - Today, at the first-ever Middle East and North Africa Regional Climate Week in Dubai, the UN High-Level Climate Action Champions launched the Work Programme of the Marrakech Partnership for Global Climate Action for 2022, which has now been officially published on the UNFCCC website.
Nigel Topping, the COP26 Champion, and the newly appointed Egyptian Champion for COP27 Mahmoud Mohieldin, joined regional stakeholders from across the MENA region to share their reflections on the UN Climate Change COP26 in Glasgow and to galvanise the non-State actor community behind a shared vision of ambitious climate action on the route to COP27 in Sharm El-Sheikh this year.
The Work Programme outlines the objectives and strategic approach of the Marrakech Partnership for Global Climate Action for 2022, representing a vast ecosystem of non-State actors committed to addressing climate change and delivering a healthier, more resilient and net-zero carbon world by 2050.
Non-state actors include cities, regions, investors and businesses and civil society which have the ability to take far-reaching and ambitious climate action, supplementing and reinforcing the crucial climate plans of governments.
With time running out to achieve the temperature goals of the Paris Agreement, and the with the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warning of accelerating climate impacts, all sectors and all parts of society need to step up ambition.
Building on the work of the last year, the work programme has the following main priorities for climate action in 2022:
Strengthen and mainstream resilience.
This encompasses many projects including identifying the actions that non-State actors can take to address existing and future climate losses, shifting the narrative on climate losses, and mainstreaming climate resilience through deepening engagement with resilience linked stakeholders. Much of this work will be delivered through the flagship Race to Resilience campaign.
Finance climate action.
The Climate Champions will work to clarify the overall green finance architecture to drive alignment and synergy among the mobilisation of capital to emerging markets and developing countries. Building on this, they will explore financing resilience, including improved climate risk assessment and supporting private sector engagement; financing near term net-zero implementation; and finally nature, including supporting more financial institutions to make and follow through on plans to eliminate agricultural commodities-driven deforestation.
Accelerate immediate climate action.
Whilst all of the work of the Marrakech Partnership is action-oriented, this emphasis comes to the fore with two key pieces of climate action this year. Firstly, with translating commitments to plans, and ensuring that Race to Zero campaign members' pledges have clear plans and meaningful action with progress reporting. Secondly, delivering tangible progress towards the 2030 Breakthrough Outcomes through coordinated action across real economy sector value chains.
Building credibility and trust in non-Party stakeholders' action.
Across all this work, the Climate Champions and the Marrakech Partnership are committed to strengthening the guidance and accountability of the global campaigns and clarifying tracking and reporting processes as part of our overall contribution to the call of the United Nations Secretary-General Expert Group on Net Zero.
As part of these collaborative efforts to accelerate climate action this year, the Climate Champions will also focus on three critical enablers to successfully drive the ambition loop, namely:
- Tracking progress, especially with aligning the tracking of actions by non-State actors, formally feeding their inputs to the preparation and technical assessment components in 2022, and facilitating their input into the formal Global Stocktake of 2023. This will be done in close collaboration with the Chairs of the UNFCCC Subsidiary Body Meetings, the co-facilitators of the Technical Dialogue, and the UNFCCC secretariat to help ensure meaningful and effective non-State actor inputs into the process.
- Radical collaboration, specifically between national governments and non-State actors in key regions to supercharge the positive ambition loop, and building and maintaining deep trusted relationships within the Marrakech Partnership stakeholders and others in the run up to and during COP27.
- Regionalization of the non-State climate action agenda by enhancing the participation of non-State actors in flagship campaigns, especially leveraging the Regional Climate Weeks throughout the climate action calendar.
