Although it’s now widely recognized that they must be tackled together, the goals of poverty alleviation and climate action haven’t always been seen as interlinked. In fact, some development advocates continue to worry that a focus on addressing climate change will come at the expense of immediate human needs, especially in the most low-income and fragile countries.

These debates have also played out within multilateral development institutions such as the World Bank, whose mission was recently redefined from “ending extreme poverty and promoting shared prosperity” to “ending poverty on a livable planet” by the bank’s new president, Ajay Banga.

“What I think Ajay Banga shifted in this conversation is recognition of the fact that poverty and environment in many domains are deeply intertwined. That a commitment to eliminating poverty is almost impossible without an equal commitment to preserving the planet,” said Richard Damania, chief economist of the Sustainable Development Practice Group at the World Bank, in this episode of Climate +.

Formerly a professor of economics at the University of Adelaide, Australia, Damania has been at the World Bank for over a decade and has witnessed how the bank’s thinking has evolved during this time. “Over time now, it's just become completely mainstream. No one would wink an eyelid if you start talking, for example, about the [economic] impacts of climate change,” he said.

Damania joined Devex President and Editor-in-Chief Raj Kumar for a special episode of Climate + sponsored by the World Bank. In addition to the bank’s new mission, they discussed how to measure the economic effects of climate change, how climate change is affecting the water cycle, and the damaging impacts of subsidies for agriculture, fishing, and fossil fuels.

The Climate + podcast is supported by the World Bank. To learn more about efforts to end poverty on a livable planet, visit: https://www.worldbank.org/en/programs/the-world-bank-at-cop28

Join Devex on Dec. 7 on the sidelines of COP 28 in Dubai or online from anywhere for the Climate + summit. Register here.

This year’s U.N. Climate Conference has already been a historic one in the nearly 30-year timespan of the COP process because it’s the first time there’s been a day dedicated to the linkages between climate change and health.

Health advocates are drawing attention to the growing public health emergency surrounding the burning of fossil fuels, especially in the wake of controversial comments made by COP 28 President Sultan Ahmed al-Jaber in which he said there is “no science” that says phasing out fossil fuels is necessary to keep global warming in check.

“Fossil fuel phase-out is the most effective and the most important public health intervention of our times,” said Marina Romanello, executive director of the Lancet Countdown on climate change and health. Romanello joined Devex global health reporter Jenny Lei Ravelo on the ground at COP 28 for the latest episode of the Climate + podcast.

“We heard from Dr. al-Jaber talking that there’s no scientific evidence — that's absolute nonsense,” Romanello said. “There’s more than enough scientific evidence showing us that we absolutely are in trouble, that we absolutely must phase out fossil fuels.”

The Climate + podcast is supported by the World Bank. To learn more about efforts to end poverty on a livable planet, visit: https://www.worldbank.org/en/programs/the-world-bank-at-cop28

Join Devex on Dec. 7 on the sidelines of COP 28 in Dubai or online from anywhere for the Climate + summit. Register here.

The United Nations Climate Change Conference known as COP is an imperfect forum for achieving progress on climate change. The discourse that unfolds there is dominated by the global north. Any action agreed upon is nonbinding. It’s heavily attended — and influenced — by lobbyists for the fossil fuel industry.

It may not be the forum we need, but it’s the forum we have, Kumi Naidoo, a climate activist and the former executive director of Greenpeace International, told Devex on the most recent episode of our Climate+ podcast.

“The way I see COP is it's about getting the best out of the really bad system,” he said. COP’s strength lies in its power to shape the narrative around climate change, which up until this point has failed to engage both citizens and governments on the scale that it needs to.

According to Naidoo, the climate movement needs to go beyond data and facts in its messaging — it needs to appeal to emotions, too. Breaking climate out of its silo and recognizing its interconnectedness with human rights, development, and economic systems is the only way forward, and COP has the potential to get that message broadcast on a large scale.

"The reality is that we are seeing, on a weekly basis now, around the world, extreme weather events which are clearly climate-induced events, which are taking lives, damaging infrastructure, destroying livelihoods, and so on,” he said. “Being able to draw attention to those things using the COP as a communicative opportunity is what activism needs to do."

The Climate + podcast is supported by the World Bank. To learn more about efforts to end poverty on a livable planet, visit: https://www.worldbank.org/en/programs/the-world-bank-at-cop28

Join Devex on Dec. 7 on the sidelines of COP 28 in Dubai or online from anywhere for the Climate + summit. Register here.

There was a time when world leaders and climate activists mostly spoke about climate change within the framework of mitigating its impacts by taking actions such as reducing fossil fuel consumption and the flow of heat-trapping greenhouse gasses.

Little was said about how to help communities adapt to the impacts of climate change. Data is consistently showing us that climate change will most heavily affect the global south through extreme weather events, including heat waves, droughts, and flooding.

Nevertheless, there is room for optimism. Devex Senior Reporter Stephanie Beasley sat down with Enock Chikava, who leads the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s agricultural development program, for the fifth episode of Devex’s Climate + podcast to find out about the initiatives the philanthropic organization is supporting to help the agricultural sector in the global south adapt to a changing climate.

In addition to providing insights on the work being done already — such as the breeding of chickens that thrive in tropical conditions, as well as the development of an artificial intelligence-powered platform to match local crops with consumer needs — Chikava also stressed the importance of involving women in decision making and policymaking in agriculture and the need for climate finance to flow to those who need it most.

Despite the positive stories, Chikava believes it is critical for the world “to realize and understand that there is a climate injustice” to help make decisions at COP 28, the U.N. climate summit, that support agricultural stakeholders in low- and middle-income countries in the face of the climate crisis.

The Climate + podcast is supported by the World Bank. To learn more about efforts to end poverty on a livable planet, check out the link.

Join Devex on Dec. 7 on the sidelines of COP 28 in Dubai or online from anywhere for the Climate + summit. Register here.

The Bridgetown Initiative, an ambitious set of proposals to overhaul how development finance works spearheaded by Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley, has been front and center of discussions about climate finance since its unveiling at last year’s United Nations Climate Conference, or COP 27.

The initiative aims to address some of the inequalities that exist in the current financial architecture, such as the fact that high-income countries are able to borrow at much more favorable interest rates than lower-income countries, by calling for additional financial support to countries, help with debt restructurings, and more private capital for green projects in low- and middle-income countries.

Pepukaye Bardouille, who herself comes from the climate-vulnerable Caribbean island nation of Dominica, is director of the Bridgetown Initiative unit of the Barbados government. She joined Raj Kumar on the Climate + podcast to discuss how to make development finance institutions fit for purpose and why the availability of cheaper, longer-term financing is critical for addressing climate change.

“It's not just about reallocating the resources that are currently available. It's about growing the pie,” said Bardouille. “The reality is that the financing that has been committed to address the crises that we're facing globally is simply not enough.”

The Climate + podcast is supported by the World Bank. To learn more about efforts to end poverty on a livable planet, visit: https://www.worldbank.org/en/programs/the-world-bank-at-cop28

Join Devex on Dec. 7 on the sidelines of COP 28 in Dubai or online from anywhere for the Climate + summit. Register here.

The decision to establish a loss and damage fund to provide financial assistance to countries affected by climate disasters was hailed as one of the biggest achievements at last year’s climate conference, or COP. One year later, reaching an agreement on how that fund will be operationalized is widely seen as a benchmark for success at COP 28.

While negotiators managed to agree on a draft framework for the fund earlier this month, multiple points of tension remain. Developing countries and civil society organizations were disappointed with the proposal to house the fund in the World Bank, at least for an interim period, rather than as an independent fund under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, as well as the decision to limit eligibility for funding to small island states and least developed countries rather than all vulnerable countries.

Harjeet Singh has been campaigning on this issue for years, and as the head of global political strategy at Climate Action Network International, a global network of NGOs fighting climate change, he’s now calling for rich countries to stop dragging their feet while climate-vulnerable countries pay the price.

“That message of hope coming out of COP 28 is extremely important. We cannot arrive at a conclusion saying it’s a work in progress,” Singh said in the second episode of Devex’s Climate + podcast. “Now it’s about really delivering it to the people and for the people.”

Climate + is supported by the World Bank. To learn more about efforts to end poverty on a livable planet, visit: https://www.worldbank.org/en/programs/the-world-bank-at-cop28

Hakima El-Haite knows what it takes to host a U.N. climate conference.

The former Moroccan environment minister served as vice president of COP21 — where the Paris Climate Agreement was signed — and then played a key role in bringing the next climate summit to her home country.

Since then, a global pandemic, debt crisis, multiple wars and rising geopolitical tensions have narrowed the space for international cooperation.

“We need to come back again and to build the trust, because today the trust is eroded. Many promises from the Paris Agreement were not kept,” El-Haite said in this first episode of Devex’s Climate + podcast.

Climate + is supported by the World Bank. To learn more about efforts to end poverty on a livable planet, visit: https://www.worldbank.org/en/programs/the-world-bank-at-cop28

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Climate + is our new twice-weekly podcast, publishing in the lead up to, during, and after this year's UN climate conference in Dubai.

Join Devex senior reporter Michael Igoe and the Devex team as we speak with COP insiders and experts, campaigners, and contrarians to ask — can COP28 deliver?

In the final episode of COPcast, chef, food advocate and filmmaker Oliver English sits down with Kate Warren to discuss how regenerative agriculture and support for small scale farmers can help transform the global food system.

Rémy Rioux is chief executive officer of the French Development Agency, or AFD. But before that, in 2015, he worked as chief negotiator on the finance track of the landmark Paris Agreement on climate. Since then the United Nations Conference of the Parties has grown into a behemoth, with COP 27 in Egypt attracting 40,000 people.

Devex sat down with Rioux on the sidelines of COP 27 to hear his thoughts on how the summit has changed since 2015 — and if it’s become an opportunity for greenwashing.

In this wide-ranging interview, Rioux also discussed the prospects of the AFD providing loss and damage financing and supporting nuclear energy programs through its aid program, and whether human rights in Egypt were helped or hindered by the summit.