Jakarta ,25 July 2022
– Indonesia's G20 Presidency this year aims to address some of the most pressing challenges, such as the COVID-19 prices and climate change. Those two things require stronger global cooperation among the G20 Members in this unprecedented time. The role of Indonesia as a bridge between developed and developing countries is instrumental to provide better global cooperation, provision of public goods and also the acceleration of SDGs achievement.
Through 'The T20 Indonesia Roundtable Discussion: "Post COVID-19 Resilience in Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals 2030", held 25 July 2022, Think 20 discussed three key issues, namely Governing Climate Target, Energy Transition and Environmental Protection, Advancing Global Health, Security and Preparedness, and Accelerating Global Cooperation for SDGs Financing. The discussion is in collaboration with the Rockefeller Foundation and invited leaders from the Bellagio Center Convening Program and Asia Impact Leaders Network. Two keynote speakers, Edi Prio Pambudi (Co-Sherpa G20 Indonesia), and Wempi Saputra (G20 Deputy for the finance track) shared some key insights and development of the G20 Indonesia. The panelists consisted of Bambang P.S. Brodjonegoro (Lead Co-Chairs of T20 Indonesia), Hasbullah Thabrany (Lead Co-Chair TF 6 T20 Indonesia/Universitas Indonesia) and Kuki Soejachmoen (Lead Co-Chair TF 3 T20 Indonesia/Indonesia Research Institute for Decarbonization). The discussion session was moderated by Riatu Mariatul Qibthiyyah (Executive Co-Chairs of T20 Indonesia).
Mainstreaming the Blended Financing for SDGs Financing
Bambang mentioned the role of philanthropic organizations in development finance, which is crucial for economic recovery. "The support from philanthropic organizations for development finance is very needed. Especially, given the fact that all public finance; concessional and conventional finance, have some limitations. And maybe, there is still room from philanthropic funding that hopefully will support the economic recovery at a faster level but at the same time sustainable" said Bambang.
Deepali Khanna, Vice-President of the Asia Region Office, Rockefeller Foundation, then supported Bambang's statement by mentioning how important and urgent development finance is to support the global recovery. "The time to work on these global recovery solutions is now. With the upcoming G20 summit scheduled in Indonesia, we can propose a fitful purpose development finance system. This will help us become more resilient to the ongoing and future development challenges, so the time to work is really, now." said Deepali.
As a Lead co-chair of Task Force 9 Global Cooperation for SDGs Financing, Bambang mentioned, "One of the important issues that we try to promote is the blended financing. In our T20 recommendation, we proposed that blended financing should be widely used not only in the issues related to social impact or such as health, and education but also in many other aspects and we would like to have blended financing as a mainstream of the development financing" said Bambang.
Bambang further stated about the possibilities of blended financing can support pandemic preparedness and resilience, "For example, one of Indonesia's priority areas is global health financing architecture, the public financing that would not be enough to cover, especially when we're talking about to build the pandemic preparedness and build the resilience, the blended financing could very much be needed for this development" said Bambang.
Governing Climate Target, Energy Transition, and Environmental Protection
Edi Prio Pambudi explained sustainable transition issue as one of the main focuses of G20, especially on energy security "At G20 Bali Summit, the Presidency proposes to launch the global deal on accelerating the energy transition, putting energy security at the hurts of sustainable transition. The approach includes decarbonizing energy sources, diversifying value chains, and supporting access to critical technology and minerals needed to accelerate investment and low emission and clean energy systems worthwhile." said Edi. Furthermore, Wempi Saputra also emphasizes the G20 agenda toward sustainable finance and sustainable energy transition, by recognizing how important they are to support economic recovery. "The G20 agenda also aims to achieve the 2030 agenda for Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Agreement. In this regard, we underline sustainable finance's critical role in achieving a greener or resilient and more inclusive global economic recovery. Under the G20 Indonesian presidency this year. The G20 Finance ministers and central bank governors were committed to supporting orderly, just, and affordable transitions towards a low greenhouse gas emissions and climate-resilient economy." said Wempi
Kuki also mentioned that T20 Policy Brief from Task Force 3 was also concerned about Climate Financing and Carbon Pricing more on the role of G20 in enhancing the capacity of national development banks and national climate funds especially those in developing countries. The recommendation also pointed out that the G20 can assist in establishing a common platform for an investment hub for renewable energy and circular economy financing. In addition to addressing the issues of energy, climate, and environment, we need an alternative technology, "we will need a lot of technology, so the access to technology the existing one and how to develop appropriate technology for different situations and circumstances of the nation, we also need to pay attention about the human capacity as well as institutions but from all those things we need good finance. Public financing will not be enough and we need numerous support from others including philanthropic and other sectors," Said Kuki.
Advancing Global Health, Security, and Preparedness
In addition, Hasbullah also mentioned the quick spread of the new mutating virus and also vaccine inequity has devastated millions of lives globally, "if we look at the nature of viruses it's capable of mutating and this condition can create difficulties. As we can see now the number of infections is going down, because of the successful vaccination. However, if we look into the distribution we can see through the data there's a disparity of the affordability and the access to vaccination," said Hasbullah.
Furthermore to build strong global health security and preparedness we need funding as well from other schemes such as philanthropic foundations but we also need to pay attention to its mechanism, "funding is important and necessary but they're several issues such as who will manage, governing bodies certainly like the world bank and in the other hands, how the fund will be distributed, and what's the basis of the requirement, how the fund meeting the medical needs and how the fund will be exempted from the political interest because of the health sector should not affect to it," said Hasbullah.
Hasbullah also mentioned creating the early warning systems for future pandemic preparedness, "what we can learn from this pandemic we can see the new viruses that can be mutating and spread quickly, Indonesia has already identified about 23 diseases that potentially can create outbreak or even pandemic, but we still lack in diagnostic. We also need to take care of what kind of diagnostic tools each country, especially low middle-income countries capable of detecting and informing other countries, it's become crucial" said Hasbullah.
