Climate Investment: Dialogue Prioritises Increased Funding to Tackle Fragility & Conflict
By: Abudu Olalekan
You think climate change is bad in normal countries? Try living in a place where bombs fall almost as often as rain doesn’t.
That was the quiet desperation hanging in the air yesterday in Muscat, Oman, as ministers and officials from Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Lebanon and Palestine sat in one room – probably for the first time in years without arguing about politics – and basically begged the Green Climate Fund to open the taps wider.
They weren’t asking for handouts. They were asking for survival money.
Dr Abdullah Al Amri, the big man from Oman’s Environment Authority, opened the whole thing with that calm Gulf style we all know. “Oman Vision 2040 no be joke,” he said (okay he didn’t speak pidgin, but that’s what he meant). Environmental sustainability na one of our top priorities. And right now, the biggest problem all of us get na how to collect this climate money wey dey very hard to touch.
Because truth be told, if your country is labelled “fragile” or “conflict-affected”, normal climate funds run away from you like you get Ebola. Banks no wan near you. Donors wan see three years audited account – brother, half the ministries no even get light, talk less of Excel sheet.
That’s where Green Climate Fund (GCF) is trying to change the game.
Henry Gonzalez, their Chief Investment Officer, stood up and said it straight: this year alone, GCF don already commit almost $500 million to fragile states. Half a billion dollars. And that’s just 2025. Since 2015, dem don put $2.85 billion into 89 projects inside war zones and places wey peace dey shaky. That’s 15% of their entire portfolio. No other climate fund dey try this hard.
Thomas Eriksson, the director wey dey handle Middle East and that side, come break am down like this:
“Climate change and war dey ginger each other. Drought push people comot for land. When people comot, fight start. When fight start, nobody fit farm again. Hunger come. More fight. Circle of hell.”
But him say there is one thing wey fit break that circle – money wey reach ground fast, wey no too many paperwork, wey fit build solar plants inside refugee camps, wey fit do boreholes wey bomb no fit destroy, wey fit teach women how to do climate-smart farming even when the men don go war.
And that’s wetin this three-day meeting for Muscat dey about.
Twenty partners dey there – UN agencies, banks, NGOs – all of them sitting with the five governments, doing country-by-country planning. No long talk. Real pipeline. Projects wey go ready next year. Readiness support wey GCF dey give so that even Syria wey everything scatter fit still write proposal wey make sense.
One Palestinian delegate pull me aside during coffee break (off record o):
“My brother, we no even get proper government sometimes, but flood still dey come, heat still dey kill people. If GCF no help us now, in ten years the whole Gaza go turn desert inside desert.”
That one pain me.
Same thing for Yemen. For Iraq. For Syria. Even Lebanon wey look fine from outside, inside na pure suffering.
By the time the dialogue close, everybody dey shake head say this na the first time dem feel say somebody actually hear them. Not pity. Real hearing.
GCF say dem no go stop. Dem wan do more. Faster. Better.
Because if climate finance no reach the places wey need am most, then all the Paris Agreement anniversary wey dem dey celebrate na just grammar.
Real people dey inside real fire. And water no dey.
