Group of more than 40 economies systemically vulnerable to climate change
advance efforts to pioneer financial innovation in responding to climate
threats
Finance Ministers insist on a financial system compatible with the new
1.5°C Paris Agreement limit, calling for G7 and G20 to align development
priorities with the goal
Swifter progress towards the $100 billion international climate finance
commitment and increased concessional financing for climate action urged
Long-term vision to establish carbon pricing regimes adopted by expanded
V20 Group

14 April 2016 – Washington, DC: The Vulnerable Twenty (V20) Group of
Ministers of Finance today met to collectively address economic and
financial responses to climate change as a rapidly growing threat to
growth and prosperity. The V20 called for an economic and financial
revolution compliant with the new 1.5 degrees Celsius and global
adaptation goals as enshrined in the UN Paris Agreement reached in
December 2015 that was strongly welcomed by the Group.

The V20 Chair, Cesar Purisima, Secretary of Finance of the Philippines,
said: “Our group has now grown to 43 vulnerable, developing
countries–simply no longer accepting putting economic growth, and even
the lives and livelihoods of our populations at severe risk, amid the slow
pace of progress in climate finance mobilization, especially from bigger
and richer countries further along in development. We see the financial
system as a weapon to fight climate change with tremendous potential. So
we are working hard to be pioneers in concrete and innovative economic and
fiscal responses to climate change. Our voice and effort has been
strengthened here in Washington and we are going to keep pushing other
economies, the G7 and the G20 to follow our lead. It’s a fight for our
survival.”

“We welcome the new World Bank Climate Change Action Plan and are
requesting additional concessional finance in the context of debt
sustainability to help realize our ambitions and scale up our own
contribution. We are encouraged by the progress we’ve made on climate
accounting, risk pooling mechanisms, carbon pricing, and expanding
financial access. We likewise expect developed countries to make good on
their climate finance mobilization commitments,” added Secretary Purisima
speaking at the V20 Ministerial Dialogue held in conjunction with the 2016
Spring Meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank Group.
The V20 gathering released a Ministerial Communique calling climate change
“a weight on the global recovery” arguing that strengthened climate
responses would “restore robust, sustained and balanced growth” while
highlighting the “clear compatibility of economic and climate change
policies.” The communique also urged the G7 and G20 to undertake urgent
efforts to realign development strategies and emission commitments with
the new international target of limiting the rise in global temperatures
to not more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

The V20 ministerial recognized new members with the expanded Group now
spanning 43 economies systemically vulnerable to climate change and
representing a combined population of more than one billion. Speaking as
an incoming V20 member, John Silk, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the
Marshall Islands, said: “The Marshall Islands is honoured to join the V20.
The world needs ambitious action by all countries if we are to decarbonise
globally and keep the window open for the 1.5 degree limit needed by
vulnerable countries like mine to survive. The V20 is devising solutions
to ramp up action. We need climate finance flows to make clean energy
available to all.”

The V20 body approved implementation plans to advance its effort to
mobilize unprecedented levels of finance from all sources including
pioneering innovation in climate finance and fiscal measures to support
local actions to the limits of the capabilities of the Group’s members.
Decisions included a vision to implement carbon pricing regimes within the
decade and calls for a Financial Transaction Tax to meet the urgent
finance mobilization needs of climate action. The body also moved to
create a platform for collaboration with business acknowledging the
significant role of the private sector for achieving transformational
change. It additionally established three Focus Groups of V20 members to
specifically address the embedding of climate change costs in public and
private accounting, to increase advocacy to promote V20 priorities in the
international financial system, and to further work towards the creation
of a V20 Risk Pooling Mechanism.

The V20 was founded in October 2015 at Lima, Peru as a dedicated
cooperation group of the Ministers of Finance of the Climate Vulnerable
Forum (CVF), a sister-initiative. Currently chaired by the Philippines,
the V20 originally consisted of 20 developing countries from Africa, Asia,
the Caribbean, Latin America and the Pacific. The Washington, DC
ministerial served to recognize the 23 new members that joined the CVF in
2015 as incoming members in the V20 initiative.