CAF Urges Climate Ambition in Latin America and the Caribbean at COP27

COP27 in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, ended with a series of global agreements to boost climate action, including the creation of a “Loss and Damage” fund, whose terms (beneficiary countries, amounts and articulation) is to be defined in the coming weeks. This fund will benefit the regions most vulnerable to climate change (paradoxically, also the least polluting regions) and addresses one of the historical, urgent demands the countries most exposed to the increase in the frequency and intensity of natural disasters. 

With regard to the commitments to curb emissions, the situation has not changed substantially with respect to the pledges made at COP26 in Glasgow, and countries failed to agree that 2025 is the peak year for polluting emissions. 

CAF is set to allocate USD 25 billion in environmental projects over the next five years, and the organization’s green operations are expected to rise from the current 26% to 40% in 2026

The CAF delegation at COP27 completed an intense agenda of events and bilateral meetings with key stakeholders in the global fight against climate change, including the GEF, GCF, Adaptation Fund, MIT, UN, UNWTO, World Bank, GGGI, European governments such as Spain, and ministers and vice ministers of more than eight Latin American and Caribbean countries. 

These are the highlights of CAF’s participation at the COP27 in Egypt:

• CAF joins global alliance against drought: COP27 launched the International Drought Resilience Alliance (IDRA), a coalition that aims to accelerate political momentum and establish a global platform to make drought resilience a priority in multilateral agreements and national development and cooperation policies.
• We made progress in creating an oceans strategy: we organized a panel with international experts to discuss the strategic lines of our new ocean strategy, based on synergies between countries, the preservation of marine fauna, the promotion of sustainable tourism and the development of local communities. At the Lisbon Ocean Summit, we announced that we will commit USD 1.25 billion to preserve ocean health.
• We signed a loan to finance a program to boost climate-smart agriculture in Colombia. The funds (USD 100 million) come from GCF and CAF. This project is set to build farmers’ capacity to manage climate risks while reducing agriculture-based emissions. It will do so by helping farmers adopt digital agricultural production and climate adaptation technologies. At national level, the initiative will build capacities among producers, technical staff and institutions to introduce a climate perspective into livestock and agricultural production.
• Nature-based solutions = community-based solutions: We launched a project with the Ministry of Environment of Colombia, MIT and CIAT that is set to empower communities with a century-old tradition of protecting the land, to lead the preservation and conservation of biodiversity, socioeconomic development, and the implementation of nature-based solutions.
• Progress in CAF’s Sustainable Tourism Initiative: We met with UNWTO and other international agencies and experts to integrate various concepts into our strategy on living and sustainable tourism.
• CAF Dinner: As every year, we organized a CAF dinner, with more than 60 guests, including the Ministers of Environment of Ecuador and Barbados, Vice Ministers of Panama and El Salvador and representatives of Latin American delegations and other international organizations.