By: Kebba AF Touray
The Gambia’s Finance Minister Mambury Njie, has called on all stakeholders to work towards accelerating the implementation of a global shield against climate risk.
Minister Njie made the call on Thursday, April 7th 2022, while co-Chairing the 6th “InsueResilience” Meeting of the High Level Consultative Group (HLCG) representing the Vulnerable Twenty (V20) group of Ministers of Finance of the Climate Cooperation and Development.
“Accelerating the implementation of a Global Shield that puts the needs of climate-vulnerable economies and communities at its center should focus on access and speed to deliver financial protection, and countering the fragmentation of the climate and disaster risk finance architecture through enhanced coordination and collaboration,” he said.
Launched at COP23 in the Germnan city of Bonn in 2017 as a joint G7, G20 and V20 initiative, Minister Njie said the vision of the ‘InsuResilience’ global partnership is to strengthen the resilience of developing countries and protect the lives and livelihoods of poor and vulnerable people against the impacts of disasters and other climate risks.
“The central objective of the partnership is to enable more timely and reliable disaster responses using climate and disaster risk finance and insurance solutions. It promotes the expansion of financial protection in developing countries as part of a comprehensive disaster risk management,” he said. Minister Njie reported that in 2021 alone and under the umbrella of the ‘InsuResilience’ Global Partnership (IGP), more than 150 million vulnerable people were financially protected by Climate and Disaster Risk Finance and Insurance (CDRFI) instruments.
“At the 6th ‘InsuResilience’ HLCG meeting, members reviewed Germany’s G7 proposition to work towards a global shield against climate risks. Assuming the G7 presidency in 2022, Germany set as one of its G7 presidency’s priorities, the protection of poor and vulnerable people and countries against climate risks within the context of increasing losses and damages from climate change,” he said.
In essence, he reiterated that Germany wants to use the political momentum of the G7 to substantially strengthen the global architecture for climate and disaster risk finance and insurance (the Global CDRFI Architecture), thus addressing the ever-increasing global protection gap.
Njie said focusing on both the process and content of the proposed global shield, gives feedback that will be considered by the process leading to the G7 summit in July 2022.
Drawn respectively from Government, civil society, international organisations, the private sector and academia, the HLCG meeting’s participants included Dr. Uzziel Ndagijimana, Finance Minister of Rwanda, and Dr. Astrid Zwick, head of the ‘InsuResilience’ Secretariat.
The 6th ‘InsuResilience’ meeting of the HLCG) was co-chaired by Minister Mambury Njie, representing the V20 Group of Ministers of Finance of the climate vulnerable forum, and Dr. Bärbel Kofler, the parliamentary State Secretary to the German Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, as the G7 Presidency.
