As negotiations under the UNFCCC’s 62nd Subsidiary Bodies (SB62) session begin in Bonn, and in the lead-up to COP 30 in Belém, Brazil this November, we joined Latin American and Caribbean civil society movements in calling for bold, rights-based climate finance commitments that respond to the urgent needs of the Global South. Following disappointing progress at COP 29 in Baku on the New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG) on climate finance, we emphasise the importance of framing climate finance through the lens of human rights obligations—particularly extraterritorial duties under Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ESCR), and States’ commitments to international cooperation and assistance. These legal obligations can serve as a normative foundation to increase the scale and quality of financial flows, ensuring that resources mobilised by developed and high-emitting countries support adaptation and mitigation efforts in the Global South in a concessional, non-debt-creating manner. This position aligns with our recent research highlighting the potential of legally binding human rights frameworks to elevate ambition and accountability in climate finance, while enhancing political pressure on decision-makers within multilateral climate negotiations.

As a member of REDFIS (the Latin American and Caribbean Network for a Sustainable Financial System), we have endorsed an Open Letter to the Government of Brazil, incoming Presidency of COP 30, urging the mobilisation of at least USD 1.3 trillion annually for climate finance. The letter calls for the Baku-to-Belém Roadmap within the NCQG, to include concrete, measurable commitments, such as prioritising adaptation as a global concern, ensuring a just and human rights-based energy transition, fostering biodiversity-climate synergies, leveraging public finance through tax system reform, transforming the international financial architecture, and guaranteeing inclusive civil society participation, including direct access to funds for Indigenous Peoples. You can read the full letter here.

In parallel, we joined 77 regional civil society organisations in co-signing a second letter to the COP 30 Presidency. This submission broadens the scope of regional civil society’s expectations across key issues, including ambition, adaptation, loss and damage, just transition, and climate-biodiversity integration. In terms of climate finance, it complements the REDFIS letter by stressing the need for robust institutional mechanisms to ensure implementation of the NCQG decision and the creation of a dedicated space to develop a substantive outcome on operationalizing Article 2.1(c) of the Paris Agreement.

Read the full letter here: