Global push to phase out fossil fuels gains momentum in Colombia summit
More than 50 governments - including the UK, Brazil, Germany, Nigeria and Canada - met this week in the Colombian port of Santa Marta for the first multilateral conference dedicated to phasing out fossil fuels. The conference was initiated to break the deadlock in UN climate negotiations on this topic by creating a "coalition of the willing". The world's three largest emitters - China, the US and India - did not attend; neither did Russia, Japan or Saudi Arabia.
The conference, co-hosted by Colombia and the Netherlands, is taking place outside the official UN process and against the backdrop of an energy price shock triggered by the US war on Iran.
Officials are using the meeting to discuss preferential trade arrangements for countries moving away from oil, gas and coal, and to develop national transition roadmaps, the Financial Times reports.
A draft roadmap for Colombia, prepared by officials with members of the UK Climate Change Committee, suggests fossil fuel demand could be cut by 90% between 2026 and 2050 if $10bn in upfront annual investment is delivered. Net economic benefits are estimated to start from 2024, with annual savings exceeding $20bn by the end of the transition, according to Piers Forster, director of the Priestley Centre for Climate Futures at the University of Leeds.
Banco do Brasil prices first commercial nature bond
Banco do Brasil has raised $500mn on international markets specifically to fund the restoration of degraded land. The commercial bank priced the deal - which it describes as the first benchmark-size nature bond from any commercial financial institution - on 16 April, attracting $2.5bn of demand, five times the offer size.
The 5.5-year senior bond carries a 5.625% coupon and a 5.875% yield, the bank said in a statement. Proceeds will fund soil restoration and improvements to agricultural productivity on degraded land, easing pressure to convert new areas to grow food.
A year of extreme weather could cut national GDP by 7.4%, Banque de France warns
A succession of severe heatwaves, droughts and wildfires in Europe could knock 7.4% off French GDP in a single year, according to a new Banque de France blogpost. Applying the NGFS's short-term climate scenarios, authors Paul Champey and Léopold Gosset show that France would be hit harder than the EU average loss of 4.8%, although less severely than India (-7.8%) or China (-7.7%) under equivalent regional shocks.
Production losses on that scale would push European inflation up by as much as 0.7%, posing what the authors describe as a dilemma for the European Central Bank (ECB), as tightening to fight inflation would risk weakening the recovery.
Climate Arc and LSE launch corporate resilience platform
A new platform launching at London Climate Action Week in June will, for the first time, give investors a standardised way to benchmark major companies on how well they are adapting to climate shocks. ResilienceArc - developed by Climate Arc with the London School of Economics' Earth Capital Nexus and Cross Dependency Initiative - is an open-access prototype linking asset-level hazard data with company-level decision-making.
The tool covers floods, extreme heat and drought, and benchmarks how well firms are adapting their factories, infrastructure and land. Climate Arc says the tool is designed to give finance, insurance and policy leaders intelligence on "not just where companies are exposed, but how well they're adapting".
