The UfM and R20 join forces to scale up climate finance

The Secretary General of the Union for the Mediterranean (UfM), Nasser Kamel, and the Executive Director of the Regions of Climate Action (R20), Christophe Nuttall, signed a partnership agreement to promote climate finance opportunities, notably at the level of regional and local authorities and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), with the help of private finance leveraged through public finance.

Paris, le 24 October 2019. Paris, 24 October 2019. UfM Secretary General, Nasser Kamel, met today with the Executive Director of R20, Christophe Nuttall, on the occasion of the One Planet Summit dedicated to “Scaling up blended finance for low carbon and climate resilient transition”. Both parties signed a Memorandum of Understanding between the two organisations.

The agreement provides a solid basis for strengthened cooperation and coordination of mutual efforts in the domain of climate finance. The UfM Secretariat and R20 agree to regularly exchange relevant information, jointly identify and support the development of sustainable infrastructure projects, such as waste optimization, decentralised renewable energy and energy efficiency, as well as deliver feasibility studies to showcase the bankability of such projects. A portfolio of projects “ready to be invested” is under preparation and will be jointly presented at COP 25.

“This cooperation agreement will allow to well position initiatives such as waste management or access to renewable energy and energy efficiency in the eyes of private and public investors in order to make them bankable. This will help to implement the green transition more rapidly” said UfM Secretary General Nasser Kamel.

“Impact investing through blended finance will be the key to unlock the huge potential untapped market that sub national infrastructure represent. R20’s previous experiences in zero waste management in Algeria or the 50 MW solar PV in Mali, not only prove that such infrastructure projects have high social and environmental impacts, as contribution to the SDGs, but they demonstrate that there is as well pretty good return on investment for investors”, added R20 Executive Director, Christophe Nuttall.

The UfM has made an important progress to map the state of climate finance in the region since 2016 and will continue its work to complete the full picture in order to produce an integrated study including public and private climate finance at the different levels.

The UfM has labelled the project Clima-Med in March 2019, which is run and funded by the EU. The aim of this regional project is to support cities in their clean energy transition and adaptation measures to climate change, as well as accompany national authorities in implementing their climate strategies. Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Palestine, and Tunisia are being accompanied in their transition to low carbon and climate-resilient economy, at national and local levels. Today’s agreement highlights the instrumental role of the UfM to establish direct links between Clima-Med and R20, meant to identify and realise projects from municipalities, in close coordination with the European Commission..