With COP27 in Egypt just a month away, global leaders have stepped up the call for changes in international financing entities to better facilitate the climate transition, especially in some of the world’s most challenged nations.

Frans Timmermans, the executive vice president for the European Union Green New Deal, said this week that “loss and damage associated with the adverse effects of climate change” is an increasingly serious challenge. Speaking at the Climate Vulnerable Forum in Kinshasa, Timmermans stressed that while all of humanity is vulnerable to climate change, Africans and others in less-developed nations face far more consequences.

“We tend to say ‘we are all in the same boat’, but frankly we are not. We are all in the same ocean, but not in the same boat,” Timmermans said. “We need to make sure that everybody has a boat that can survive the wild seas that we are facing today and that we will be facing for the foreseeable future.”

He added that despite positive changes at the International Monetary Fund, for example, more is needed.

“We have to redo our international financial architecture to make sure the instruments are much, much better suited to, for instance, allow for private capital to be invested massively where that is possible,” he said. “I think our international financial system is not up to that task today.”

His remarks were followed Thursday by an appeal from Janet Yellen, the United States Secretary of the Treasury.

“Global challenges like climate change will not be solved by the development banks alone, no matter how successful these reforms may be,” Yellen said “The scale of the problem is too big. Individual countries will need to make changes, including important policy reforms.  Advanced economies must provide quality financing, and crucially, the private sector will need to step in with investments and technology.”

Image: European Union/Frans Timmermans