Global Youth Adaptation Network Calls for Urgent International Financial System Reform

The science is clear: we must act urgently to halt widespread climate breakdown. And yet, the world is making glacial progress towards ​​​reaching the goals of the Paris Agreement​. As young people, our future is at stake. ​Climate change ​severely impacts the rights and livelihoods of children and youth. After consultations that engaged thousands of young people around the world in 2022, the youth adaptation movement sends a clear message: we need bold actions for economic and climate prosperity.  
 
Far greater ambition and action are urgently needed to adapt our world and ensure a safer, greener and more prosperous future for all. Adaptation finance is critical to prepare vulnerable communities for and withstand the increasing impacts of the climate crisis. The current international financial system was not designed for today’s world. Existing financial commitments have failed to be delivered and are insufficient to implement Nationally Determined Contributions. International adaptation finance flows to developing countries are five to ten times below estimated needs, and the gap is widening.
 
As the global youth adaptation movement, we are calling on finance ministers and global leaders to catalyze this unique reform opportunity that the Summit for a New Global Financing Pact presents to increase the scale and speed of adaptation finance with an equity- and rights-based approach. 
 
In light of the above, we call upon world leaders and finance ministers to: 

• Ensure continuous progress to deliver the promise made at COP26 to at least double adaptation finance by 2025 compared to 2019 levels. Fully recognize the urgency of taking climate action, by increasing the scale and speed of climate finance mobilization, including allocating at least 50% of total climate finance on adaptation, whilst ensuring its additionality. 
• Guarantee just, equitable and de-colonial climate finance for adaptation and loss and damage, including through drastically shifting adaptation finance from loans to grants, besides debt cancellation and swaps, as the V20 Presidency has called for. 
• Reprioritize their funding portfolio to adequately and equitably respond to the climate crisis, including by drastically shifting away from direct or indirect fossil fuel financing. Shareholders should also launch windfall tax within their nations for fossil fuel projects, whilst phasing out fossil fuel. All stakeholders must recognize that financing climate action contributes to the progress of intertwined crises, including poverty, biodiversity loss, and other threats addressed by the Sustainable Development Goals. 
• Recognize the leadership of youth, women and genders, Indigenous peoples and local communities in taking climate action, especially on building climate resilience. We demand greater rights-based funding to be made more accessible to the most impacted communities in the front line taking climate action, including through grants, capacity-building training, and establishing innovative partnerships with formally established and informal youth-led initiatives. 
• In addition to the Summit for a New Global Financing Pact, other relevant processes should also join forces on the reform agenda, including the G20, Africa Climate Summit, Annual Meetings of the World Bank Group and the International Monetary Fund, and within UN climate processes (for example, the New Collective Quantified Goal, COP28, Global Stocktake, Global Goal on Adaptation, Loss and Damage Fund, and the Climate Ambition Summit).

Details of our views on why the reform is needed, as well as what various stakeholder groups are demanding, can be found below.

Note to editors 
This statement is prepared by the Youth Adaptation Network (YAN) of the Global Center on Adaptation. The Youth Adaptation Network brings together over 11,000 young people around the world who are invested in driving the global response to climate adaptation. The statement is released on behalf of the YAN ahead of the Summit for a New Global Financial Pact taking place in June 2023. The statement has been open for consultation to the YAN from 25^th April to 28^th May 2023. The ideas expressed in this statement are those of the YAN and do not necessarily reflect those of the Global Center on Adaptation.
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