A Global Climate Alliance to Accelerate Climate Action: Proposals to the G20

The unrelenting impact of climate change poses an existential crisis for our planet. Immediate and substantial climate action to address this planetary crisis is only possible if the Global South and North countries partner together. To that end, the Global Climate Alliance (GCA) Collaborativea is an independent research effort to evaluate how the Global South can best ally with the Global North to accelerate climate action. Over the past two years, several academic institutions and think tanks have collaborated on these issues. This effort has resulted in the outline of a framework for a GCA. The GCA initiative builds on existing climate agreements and multiple modelling studies that indicate that net zero is net positive. The overall goal of the GCA is to facilitate mutually- beneficial decarbonisation pathways between Global North and Global South countries jointly with necessary financial and technology partnerships. This policy brief discusses the key challenges in coordinating and problem of scaling up private-sector climate finance. It also provides a brief description of the key principles for the proposed GCA, and discusses the major initiatives that can be undertaken by the G20 countries. The brief also presents five actionable recommendations for the G20 Leader’s Summit: (1) announcing and endorsing the principles of a GCA as part of a dialogue with the G7 Climate Club process, aimed at creating a common structure that better reflects the interests of the Global South; (2) mobilising multilateral development banks to immediately launch novel climate financing mechanisms, such as long-term currency hedging; (3) establishing sectoral working groups that will formulate Paris-aligned decarbonisation targets, pathways, and financing requirements; (4) setting up a GCA secretariat under the aegis of the G20 as a bridging measure to help develop an integrated G20/ G7 structure; and (5) designating nodal climate financing institutions in participating Global South countries to act as hubs to accelerate private