Hope prevails

Reflecting on the buzz of New York Climate week and UNGA festivities, and I have to say that while it felt even more high tempo this year, I was fortunate and intentional in having calm moments of beautiful connection, joy and vulnerability, all of which helped ground me. Sifting through the noise in my head and all that has been circulating, here are some of my key highlights:

• Money talks: Stacking up all the stats => $1.3 trillion in climate finance flows falling short of the $3-5 trillion needed annually, 7% of venture capital going to female climate tech funders, 2% of mitigation ODA has a gender lens. Any which way you cut it, climate finance flows are falling well short of what’s needed. We need to not only scale up the quantum but also the quality of finance, by ensuring lived experience, transformative outcomes and proximity are built in. With today’s pivotal moment of COP 29 as the Finance COP and the path to COP30 in Brazil, the clock is ticking for the financial sector to take more responsibility, galvanise capital across the spectrum of private and public sources and accelerate collective action.?
• Gender is material: I am undoubtedly biased as I work at the gender and climate finance nexus, but when Forbes votes your event as one of 10 to watch, doesn’t that make it a trend! During our well attended and engaging event that we co-hosted with 瑞银集团 and ImpactAlpha key takeaways included: i) mobilising gender smart climate finance offers access to untapped and growing opportunities in terms of the next generation of climate-smart solutions, ii) helps mitigate risk and future proof portfolios and iii) allocations are woefully behind what is needed. We need much " more courageous capital and alot more yeses" as Laurie J Spengler said. Moreover, all through the week there was incredible programming from so many partners, Women's Earth Alliance Daughters for Earth Clinton Global Initiative Women Moving Millions Project Dandelion Convergence Blended Finance Business Fights Poverty Ban Ki-moon Foundation 亚马逊 USAID and so many more- all focused on how women are agents of change, at the forefront of climate and gender-smart solutions, how and why diverse voices matter.?Incredible examples, practical insights and case studies of how were shared beautifully.

• Shaking the core: I marvel at the immense power of possibility we can lean into during these challenging times. There is so much innovation, so many new models of doing and being and the whole financial architecture we operate in is ripe for change. As the incredible global leader Sandrine Dixson-Declève says “current commitments?are incremental adjustments to existing systems, rather than the rapid, far-reaching transformative solutions that are needed to confront the climate and biodiversity crises." There was also a rousing call to action from Mia Mottley around shifting the financial frameworks upon which climate and broader finance flows is based. Given these are systems built by humans, we definitely have the power to change it. It was encouraging to see movements like Sidebar (thanks Seth Cochran Jailan Adly )come to NY and provide an inclusive and welcoming space for convening, learning and reflecting. AI also made it into many rooms and I was conjecturing what it might look like to leverage AI in mapping all our collective efforts on climate action to arrive at clearer shared pathways of collaboration
• Interconnectedness and interbeing: Just like climate, nature and biodiversity are intertwined and mutually independent, streams of finance, development, advocacy and social justice also mirror the same dynamics. Given this interconnectedness, if we are going to advance sustained change we need to leverage intersectional systems level thinking and deep empathy and commitment towards working through our differences to find the commonalities. Fundamentally, we need to widen the tent and bring affected communities directly into these forums, while also embracing a lot more hope, compassion and optimism so as to chart inclusive and actionable pathways forward.?