Statement by the Permanent Representative of Brazil to the United Nations, Ambassador Ronaldo Costa Filho, at the UNSC Arria Formula meeting on “Climate Finance for Sustaining Peace and Security” - March 9th, 2022

Mr. Chair,

I would like to thank your initiative of convening this meeting and providing us with the opportunity to exchange views on this relevant subject.

Last November, at COP26 in Glasgow, we have made significant progress, particularly in finalizing the Paris Agreement Rulebook.

But in Glasgow we have also noted, with deep regret, that the goal of developed countries to jointly mobilize USD 100 billion per year by 2020 was not met. And we now must focus our efforts on guaranteeing the fulfillment of the 100 billion goal through 2025 and ensuring concrete and meaningful progress in the deliberations of a new collective quantified goal on climate finance beyond the USD 100 billion floor.

In this context, bridging the significant gaps for adaptation is particularly urgent, especially when considering that potential indirect impacts of climate factors and extreme weather events in specific contexts could be consistently addressed through robust climate action to strengthen resilience, enhance adaptive capacity and reduce vulnerability to climate change.

While this meeting is focused on climate finance, I would also recall that the necessary support for developing countries - including in conflict-affected and fragile contexts - must involve not only a significant increase in finance, but also the provision and mobilization of adequate means of implementation in a broader sense, including capacity-building and technology transfer.

I am sure that concrete, robust and transparent commitments of developed countries in this regard would be the most important steps to address the vulnerabilities in fragile contexts particularly impacted by the adverse effects of climate change and weather extremes. And we remain convinced that all these steps can be taken under the auspices of the UNFCCC and its Paris Agreement.

It is moreover within the framework of the sustainable development agenda that ambitious climate action, including through a more robust climate finance for developing countries, can further contribute in a meaningful way for sustaining peace and security. In this sense, I would like to stress the need for caution regarding any suggestion of establishing direct links between the climate finance agenda and discussions on the funding and provision of financial resources for Security Council mandates, peacebuilding and humanitarian aid. The conflation of these issues may raise many concerns.

Mr. Chair,

A discussion of climate finance strictly focused on conflict-affected countries suggests, in my view, two extremely worrying possibilities on the horizon. Firstly, an implicit acknowledgement of the failure to mobilize sufficient financial resources to ensure increased ambition and accelerated climate action to meet the Paris Agreement Mitigation Goals. Secondly, a slightly less implicit suggestion that the Security Council could, through its mandates, induce the mobilization and diversion of the already scarce resources for climate finance, channeling them to conflict-affected contexts, to the detriment of other developing countries.

As a corollary, these two possibilities could also mislead us to double counting of international flows of resources directed to climate mitigation and adaptation, thus worsening the current gaps on accurate information thereon.

These two legitimate concerns also underscore the view that the encroachment of the Security Council into the climate change agenda may have systemic implications that must be carefully considered - including in relation to the functioning and overall dynamics of the multilateral climate change regime. It would further reinforce the perception that a thematic, cross-cutting treatment of climate change issues within the Security Council is fundamentally inadequate, either generating potential overlapping of mandates and duplication of efforts or diverting the attention from instruments and mechanisms already in place that can and should be mobilized to address climate change in an inclusive, transparent and balanced manner.

Mr. Chair,

The recently released Working Group II contribution to the Sixth Assessment Report of the IPCC presents alarming findings concerning climate change impacts and risks. While the report points out that indeed weather and climate extremes may cause economic and societal impacts, it also expressly recognizes that non-climatic factors are the dominating drivers of existing intrastate violent conflicts. Even in regions where extreme weather and climate events have had adverse impacts, it concludes that the statistical association between climate factors and conflicts is deemed "weak", I repeat, "weak".

As we must all strive to guide our climate action based on the best available scientific findings, I once again reiterate that what we need are concrete and bold steps towards new, additional, adequate and predictable climate financing - among other means of implementation - for developing countries, and not vague promises that could generate a perverse dynamics of competition between developing countries for limited financial resources, in exchange for a new, securitized approach to climate change that will have little impact in addressing its root causes and could jeopardize the consensus-driven, inclusive and balanced nature of the multilateral climate change regime.

I thank you.