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- Lettres de l'Est et des Balkans • Le blog de Pierre Glachant / Blogs - DiaporamaLocal farmer ploughing a field in Indonesia. Credit: Unsplash
By Ana Carolina Avzaradel Szklo
RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil, Nov 26 2025 (IPS)
The UN climate talks at COP30 once again brought the critical issue of climate finance to the forefront of global discussions.
However, while much of the debate revolved around traditional forms of aid directed at developing countries most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, a faster, more transformative approach lies in expanding access to carbon markets.
When emerging and developing economies (EMDEs) are equipped with the tools and knowledge needed to engage in these markets on their own terms, carbon finance can be generated and harnessed in ways that reflect their unique natural assets, governance, social contexts, and national priorities.
Achieving global climate and sustainable development goals depends on ensuring that those worst affected by climate change can fully participate in and benefit from this growing flow of finance.
EMDEs are on the frontlines of climate change — from rising sea levels threatening Pacific island nations to intensifying droughts and fires in the Amazon and Horn of Africa, and increasingly intense and frequent hurricanes in the Caribbean. These crises often hit hardest in regions that have contributed least to global emissions and in the most difficult position to react to them.
Yet, these same nations face a climate finance shortfall of $1.3 trillion per year. Carbon markets present an opportunity for these countries to bridge this gap by turning their natural advantages into climate finance assets.
Despite successful initiatives aimed at bolstering both high-integrity supply and demand for carbon credits, significant barriers to access persist, particularly for EMDEs. From fragmented policy landscapes to weak governance structures, limited institutional capacity, and low investor confidence, various obstacles prevent the vast potential of EMDEs to engage fully.
The Access Strategies Program — led by the Voluntary Carbon Markets Integrity Initiative — is a direct response to these challenges. It helps governments design and implement their own pathways into high-integrity carbon markets, enabling them to build the policies, institutional capacity, and investor confidence needed to meet their climate finance needs and transform their potential into progress.
Each country’s natural capital — from Brazil’s vast rainforest and agricultural landscapes, to the Caribbean’s blue carbon ecosystems, or Kenya’s grasslands and renewable energy potential — represents a unique competitive advantage, ready to be realised.
Simultaneously, no two countries share the same development goals or governance contexts. In some, carbon markets can drive forest conservation and biodiversity protection; while in others, they deliver the most impact by strengthening rural livelihoods or financing clean energy transitions.
The Access Strategies model recognises this uniqueness, tailoring its support to help countries use carbon finance in ways that align with their own specific economic and environmental strategies and goals.
For example, the Partnership for Agricultural Carbon (PAC) — developed with the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA) — is building capacity across Latin American and Caribbean agriculture ministries to participate in high-integrity carbon markets. It provides training, policy guidance, and decision-making tools that help governments and farmers identify viable carbon projects aligning with national agricultural and sustainability goals.
The collaboration has given small and medium producers a clearer route to investment, while positioning agriculture as a central player in regional climate strategies. Another example of the Access Strategies work is the recently launched Amazon Best Practices Guide, which will help Amazon state governments design and implement carbon market frameworks made specifically for their unique ecological and governance realities.
Moreover, in countries such as Kenya, Peru, and Benin, the Program has provided tailored support to develop policy and regulatory frameworks, strengthen institutional capacity, and attract responsible investment for high-priority climate mitigation projects — all in line with country-led goals.
These examples show what’s possible when governments have the tools and expertise to engage in high-integrity carbon markets on their own terms. More countries should seize this opportunity to tap into the growing flow of finance from carbon markets.
While carbon markets are not a silver bullet, they are one of the few scalable and self-sustaining tools available when grounded in integrity and tailored to each country’s needs.
Programs like Access Strategies do more than transfer technical knowledge — they build the enabling conditions for locally led action, drawing on countries’ unique ecological, social, and institutional insights to shape solutions that work in practice.
The focus of global climate action should not only be on new funding pledges, but on ensuring funding that is already available is effectively redirected for EMDEs countries to harness their own natural capital and promote social inclusion, while meeting their climate goals and reshaping their development pathway.
Building this kind of capacity is how we turn global ambition into lasting, locally owned progress, and moreover how carbon finance can become a true instrument of sustainable development.
Ana Carolina Avzaradel Szklo, Technical Director, Markets and Standards, Voluntary Carbon Markets Integrity Initiative (VCMI)
IPS UN Bureau
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UN Secretary-General António Guterres addresses the media at the G20 Summit in South Africa. Credit: UN Photo/Ropafadzo Chiradza
By Danny Bradlow
PRETORIA, South Africa, Nov 26 2025 (IPS)
US president Donald Trump’s efforts to derail a successful wrap-up of the G20 summit in Johannesburg failed. Trump boycotted the meeting and the US told other countries through diplomatic channels not to sign a communiqué. Nevertheless, the 19 remaining countries and regional organisations signed a 30-page declaration.
This called for, among other things, increased funding for renewable energy projects, more equitable critical mineral supply chains and debt relief for poorer countries. Senior research fellow Danny Bradlow explains what was, and wasn’t, achieved.
In what ways was South Africa’s G20 presidency a success?
The G20 has been a great diplomatic success for South Africa in at least three ways.
First, it succeeded in leading all the other G20 countries and organisations to adopt by consensus a leaders’ declaration despite a boycott and bullying tactics by Washington.
The 120 paragraph Leaders’ Declaration covered all the issues embodied in the “Solidarity, Equality and Sustainability” theme that South Africa chose for the G20. They included:
2017 during Germany’s G20 presidency
Second, South Africa succeeded in launching a number of initiatives over the course of the year.
Firstly, the G20 acknowledged South Africa’s five years of support for the establishment of an African Engagement Framework within the G20’s finance track. It is intended to support enhanced cooperation between Africa and the G20.
Secondly, leaders expressed support, in various ways, for the G20 working group initiatives on illicit financial flows, infrastructure, air quality, artificial intelligence, sustainable development and public health. The ministerial declaration on debt was also supported. This includes reforms around initiatives supporting low and middle income countries facing debt challenges.
Thirdly, the Ubuntu Legacy Initiative was launched. This is designed to fund cross-border infrastructure in Africa. It was also agreed that an Ubuntu Commission will be set up to encourage research and dialogue on dealing cooperatively with global challenges. Ubuntu can be explained with reference to the isiZulu saying ‘umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu’ which means ‘a person is a person through other people.’ It entails an ethics of care, compassion and cooperation.
Lastly, South Africa succeeded in delivering an effective, efficient and constructive G20 year. This is no small feat. It required the country to organise more than 130 meetings of G20 working groups, task forces and ministerial meetings, in addition to the leaders’ summit.
Is this only a good news story?
It is inevitable that any complex, multifaceted and voluntary process involving participants with strong and contrasting views will not be an unqualified success.
This, without doubt, is the case with South Africa’s G20 year. The environment was complicated by a number of factors:
These factors meant that getting the diverse membership of the G20 to reach agreement on a broad range of complex issues would be extremely difficult. In fact, it would only be possible to do so at a high level of abstraction.
Unfortunately, this proved to be the case. The result is that the G20 Leaders’ Declaration largely boils down to a set of general statements that are almost totally devoid of commitments for which states can be held accountable. Such general statements are not uncommon in the diplomatic statements issued at the end of high-level multilateral meetings. However, this is an extreme example.
The leaders expressed their support for a number of voluntary principles on issues such as disaster relief, artificial intelligence, critical minerals and debt. They also expressed support for the work of organisations like the multilateral development banks and the International Monetary Fund, and for some specific South African led initiatives like the review of the G20 itself.
However, there are no time frames or deliverables attached to these expressions of support.
What needs to be done to make the declaration effective?
The G20 is a voluntary association with no binding authority. The declaration’s efficacy therefore ultimately depends on all the G20’s stakeholders both taking – and advocating – for action on the issues raised in it.
These stakeholders include states and non-state actors like international organisations, businesses and civil society organisations.
The value of the declaration is how both the state and non-state actors use it to advocate for action. That can be in future G20 meetings as well as other regional and international forums.
How can the declaration be used to lead to action?
One of the biggest challenges facing African countries is debt. Over 20 are either in debt distress or at high risk of debt distress. Many African countries are being forced to choose between servicing their debts and investing in the development and climate resilience of their own populations.
The challenge that this creates for African states is exacerbated by their limited access to affordable, predictable and sustainable sources of development finance.
This means that African countries are unlikely to gain a sustainable path to reaching their development and climate goals without substantial action on debt and development finance. The Leaders’ Declaration, in paragraphs 14-22, clearly recognises the challenge. Key elements include:
Global Sovereign Debt Roundtable
But these will be just empty words unless the endorsements are turned into action.
There are three actions that stakeholders can take.
First, African leaders can form a regional borrowers’ forum to discuss the debt issue and share information on their experiences dealing with creditors and on developing common African positions on development finance and debt. This would build on the work done by:
They can also use this forum to engage in open discussions with African non-state actors.
Second, African non-state actors can develop strategies for holding the leaders accountable if they fail to follow up on the declaration. And they can hold creditors accountable for their actions in their negotiations with African debtors in distress.
Third, African non-state actors should initiate a review of how the IMF needs to reform its operational policies and practices. Africa has eloquently advocated for greater African voice and vote in IMF governance. The next step should be to explore how the substantial changes that have taken place in the scope of IMF operations can be translated into operational practices. These include the macroeconomic impacts of climate, gender and inequality.
Daniel D. Bradlow is Professor/Senior Research Fellow, Centre for the Advancement of Scholarship, University of Pretoria
IPS UN Bureau
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