What do you do when a climate investment fund celebrates its 10-year anniversary and you are called to stage-manage the whole production?
That’s the question I was asking myself when I joined the Climate Investment Funds (CIF) about three months ago.
I knew I was heading into a busy year. Not least because of the learning curve: before CIF, I hadn’t known much about climate finance, let alone what CIF was or how it contributes to a lower-carbon world.
Recently I traveled to Thailand, whose strong economic growth and significant poverty reduction makes it a compelling development story. Much of the country’s growth has come on the back of mostly imported fossil fuels, which account for about 80 percent of the nation’s power.
Women the world over face many barriers in accessing and participating in decision-making on forest resources. The CIF Gender Program spoke with Berenice Hernández Toro, Director of Financing at Mexico’s National Forest Agency, CONAFOR, about the experience of Mexico in this regard, following a recent presentation at the Mexican Embassy in Washington DC on the Forest Investment Program (FIP) Mexico experience detailed in a new forest case study prepared under the Climate Investment Funds.
Roughly 1.3 billion people – nearly 20 percent of the world’s population – rely on forests and forest products for their livelihoods. While deforestation and forest degradation are global problems, those who depend on forest resources for their daily lives are most invested in ensuring their protection and sustainable use.
“It’s good to talk.”
Many people who were in the UK during the mid-1990s will remember the tagline that became synonymous with a UK telecoms firm and initially spoken by actor Bob Hoskins.
In the 1990s, Mexico experienced one of the highest rates of deforestation across Latin American countries. While deforestation has slowed, it continues to be a problem along with comparatively higher rates of forest degradation.
The Forest Investment Program (FIP) finances programmatic efforts to address underlying causes of deforestation and forest degradation and to overcome barriers that have hindered past efforts, through three projects with a total investment of $66 million.
From December 2016 to May 2017, we - a group of four M.A. candidates in International Development Studies from the George Washington University - partnered with the $8.3 billion Climate Investment Funds (the CIF) as part of our Masters capstone project.
Walk along the dusty paths and through the boggy marshes of Kazungula in Zambia and you get a sense of the reality of climate change. In a district a few hours’ drive from Livingstone, the extreme temperatures, prolonged droughts and increased floods forecast by scientists and academics are increasingly becoming a reality.
