COVID19 recovery and other environmental issues

The (international) City Climate Finance Gap Fund (BMZ, BMU)

Internationally investments in urban infrastructure present an opportunity to rebuild in a way that is climate friendly and that creates co-benefits for job creation, public health and overall well-being. The City Climate Finance Gap Fund that will be launched in September 2020 contributes to ensuring that cities recover from the pandemic while at the same time enhancing their climate resilience and retaining some of the benefits citizens have experienced from cleaner air and reduced pollution. The Gap Fund provides the technical assistance needed to turn climate-focused ideas into concrete urban project proposals. It is an initiative of and currently supported by the Federal Ministry for the Environment (BMU) (and its International Climate Initiative IKI), the Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), as well as Luxembourg’s Ministry of the Environment, Climate and Sustainable Development. It is implemented by the European Investment Bank and the World Bank. With a target size of 100 mio. Euro, the Gap Fund will work with cities to unlock €4 billion of investments and implement their climate strategies.

BMU Corona Response-Package
As an immediate response, BMU has developed a Corona-Response-Package under its International Climate Initiative (IKI) to support IKI partner countries. BMU made available significant additional ad-hoc funding of 68 Mio. EUR. The measures focus on three focus areas:
• Emergency measures for nature reserves and biodiversity hotspots: Due to quarantine measures and lack of funds from tourism, communities such as indigenous groups are acutely at risk. Therefore, one focus of the measures is to provide financial support for the conservation of nature reserves and biodiversity hotspots and to mitigate the immediate consequences of the COVID 19 pandemic.
• Support for green economic recovery: economic advisors in twelve partner countries are financed to support planning and finance ministries in designing climate-friendly economic stimulus programmes. Additional support is given to ongoing IKI projects that have a special employment effect while laying the foundation for the integration of climate change and biodiversity aspects into long-term policies for economic development. To this end, the BMU will give additional funds to 16 IKI projects and adapt the content to include further nine projects. These projects focus on energy efficiency, renewable energies, urban development, and the mobilization of sustainable investments.
• The third part of the package focuses on the prevention of pandemics. The increasing occurrence of viral pandemics is closely linked to poaching and wildlife trafficking worldwide. In this context, considerable investments are needed to protect wildlife in order to prevent comparable pandemics by reducing the risk of zoonoses.
African Risk Capacity (BMZ): As part of its emergency COVID-19 support programme, BMZ assumes premium payments of around EUR 19 million for the drought insurance offered by the African Risk Capacity (ARC). This will reliably protect up to 20 million poor and vulnerable people in Africa against drought in the coming agricultural season and mitigate the risk of a compound crisis. BMZ is responding to this situation with its emergency COVID-19 support programme: Zimbabwe and four West African countries, which have to take out insurance cover already in June, will be provided with EUR 8.5 million for premium payments under ARC Replica. This will enable the World Food Programme and the START Network to take out ARC policies for Burkina Faso, The Gambia, Mali, Mauritania, and Zimbabwe. BMZ is further providing EUR 10.5 million for premium subsidies to countries in the south and east of the continent, where the insurance policy will not be taken out until the second half of 2020 due to the later planting season.
NDC Partnership (BMZ): Under the umbrella of the NDC Partnership, BMZ provided $6 million US dollars to support countries develop green recovery. These funds are used in two ways. First, to deploy advisors to ministries in NDCP selected member countries to support the climate-friendly design of economic stimulus packages.
Second, funds will be used by the World Bank to provide targeted analysis and advisory services for the design of climate-friendly budget support projects (“Development Policy Financing”) in selected NDCP member countries with the aim of reviving the countries’ economies from the pandemic. The funds will be administered by the World Bank’s NDC Support Facility, in close coordination with the NDC Partnership

Climate Change Capacity Development Program (BMZ): Within the BMZ and IMF climate cooperation, BMZ provides additional funding to support a green recovery. Aim of the Program is to boost capacities of finance ministries and central banks to design fiscal policies for climate change mitigation and adaptation, in paricular in respect to Covid19 recovery measures. The Program supports capacity development activities within the IMF’s mandate as well as knowledge sharing with government institutions, finance ministries and central banks on policy issues at the nexus of financial and economic stability and climate change.

Mobility (BMZ): The transport sector is both a major and fast-growing source of GHG-emissions and heavily affected by Covid-19-related lockdown measures. Green recovery in the transport sector can create jobs and make urban mobility more climate-friendly and sustainable at the same time, e.g. by making so-called popup-bike lanes permanent or improving public transport for all. Through its Transformative Urban Mobility Initiative (TUMI) and the Action towards Climate-friendly Transport (ACT), the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) is advocating for green recovery in the transport sector and facilitating capacity development.