London Climate Action Week 2024

Evident took full advantage of this year’s London Climate Action Week, an inspiring gathering of 45,000 people at 300 events over just seven days in June.

With devastating extreme weather events in the headlines seemingly every week, the sense of urgency was clear across the LCAW programme. E3G’s Nick Mabey set the tone, noting that if ‘politics is the art of the possible, climate politics must be the art of the necessary’. High-level framing sessions helped orient and reinvigorate the wider climate conversation, but it was the focussed practicums that really charted the near-term path forward on areas like catalysing the carbon removals market today, spurring private sector climate finance, the role of voluntary carbon markets, and more.

Evident's Head of Policy, Luke Greicius shares his reflections on LCAW 2024, and what it means for the transition to a clean economy:

1. De-risking the transition in the global south: Despite great progress in some areas of the GreenTransition, developing economies face stark challenges in meeting their decarbonisation targets.The cost of capital can be three to four times higher than in developed economies; servicing sovereign debt is eating up to 23% of export revenue in some countries, and multinational development bank reform is too slow and not bold enough.Private sector instruments, such as Evident’s certificate registries, are critical to channelling resources from North to South, but governments need to work alongside the insurance sector to de-risk the transition.
2. Creating a common language: Enthusiasm and optimism were not in short supply, but the sprawling ecosystem of climate standards, initiatives, markets, and frameworks has fragmented the climate space and slowed progress.A shared language, greater interoperability, and trusted data must underpin key transition markets like renewable power, carbon removals, and sustainable fuels to mobilise the trillions in finance required to meet NetZero by 2050.Here, too, work is taking shape. Alignment and expansion of established financial accounting standards with climate impact is making progress, critical (if niche) bodies like the International Standards Organisation (ISO) are stepping up in developing a net-zero standard, and markets and market regulators are increasingly designing rules around environmental goals.These concerted efforts might seem weedy and dry, but they are absolutely critical to achieving the interoperability, transparency, and integrity of the various markets we need to mobilise private capital. As one speaker put it, ‘it took 1,000 years for us to get to the financial accounting system we have now; we don’t have 1,000 years, we don’t even have two decades to get [climate accounting] right’.
3. Global ambition, local implementation: German Climate Envoy Jennifer Morgan captured the heart of the current climate change challenge: it is at once a ‘deeply global, and deeply local problem’.High-level commitments are moving in the right direction, but implementation falls to actors on the ground in vastly diverse environments. According to a disquieting analysis by E3G, the share of global emissions coming from restrictive, undemocratic political environments is increasing year after year, meaning the growing public support for climate action might not be sufficient to enact the policies and public financing required to achieve targets. We need concrete and achievable plans of action and customised tools built for purpose at a local level.Much work remains, but the path to a clean economy is getting clearer, and Evident is committed to being part of this important journey.