From Aligning with Paris to the SDGs

4 November 2020 - Climate Brief - By : Alice PAUTHIER / Ian COCHRAN, Phd

Climate Action and Sustainable Development are two parts of the same challenge and must be addressed together. Both adopted in 2015, the Paris Agreement and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development frame a set of global objectives that are deeply connected.

Since 2015, discussions on the ‘alignment’ either with the climate or sustainable development objectoves have arisen with a need to develop robust frameworks that can support institutions in aligning themselves with these objectives from strategies to operations. This document aims to connect the dots between the climate and the sustainable development community and discuss how to connect – if not unify – alignment approaches.

This Climate Brief discusses how I4CE’s Framework for Alignment with the Paris Agreement could be used as a basis for broader SDGs alignment frameworks. It is intended to serve as a basis for exchange between financial institutions’ practitioners and the think tank and research community who have started to develop and sometimes implement alignment approaches with either climate or sustainable development objectives, or both.

Key messages:

– Alignment requires that both public and private actors look across three dimensions to assess whether their strategies and operations are both consistent with and best contribute to climate and sustainability goals:
– A Comprehensive Scope of Action,
– A Long-Term Time Horizon to Guide Impact,
– An Ambitious Scale of Contribution.

– Alignment approaches should rely on ambitious national pathways or ‘visions’ of how long-term climate and sustainability goals could be met nationally and internationally. How-ever, in practice national pathways are still insufficiently operationalizable and there is an urgent need to develop them.

– To overcome the inherent complexity of addressing both climate change and other SDGs simultaneously, the approach proposed by the 2019 Global Sustainable Development Report appears to be a step forward to guide the development of align-ment methodologies.

From Aligning with Paris to the SDGs Download

I4CE Contacts

Alice PAUTHIER

Project Manager – Development finance Email

Related publications

See all publications

To learn more

04/19/2024 Foreword of the week
World bank and IMF Spring Meetings: How can the reformed institutions play a leading role in funding the transition?

Rethinking how development can be financed to take into account the rising challenges of our time is a fastidious task, especially when thousands of experts, decision makers and practitioners want to leave their print. The outline of the new international financial architecture is being debated again this week, with more questions open for discussion than consensus on the answers.
04/19/2024 Blog post
More and better finance: maximising positive climate impacts for a timely transition

Since the Paris Agreement in 2015, significant strides have been made to foster the commitment of countries and financial institutions to address the climate crisis and ensure that climate risks and opportunities are considered in investments. However, with emissions required to peak before 2025, our window of opportunity is rapidly closing to keep +1.5°C within reach. Financial needs to lower greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and to address adaptation priorities are increasing rapidly in the meantime. Luis Zamarioli Santos and Diana Cárdenas Monar, from I4CE, believe that commitment must urgently translate into action, and action must bring the urgent change the world needs. Both governments and public financial institutions have a central role to play to deliver more and better finance, maximising positive impacts. This blogpost highlights some opportunities to advance in the path for a systemic transformation, involving key stakeholders with a whole-economy approach.
04/17/2024
Ambitious alignment with the Paris Agreement in public development banks

At the Spring Meetings, during an event with senior climate representatives from Multilateral Development Banks, I4CE, E3G, Germanwatch and NewClimate Institute officially launched a common position paper on what ambitous Paris alignment means for public development banks. This paper summarises years of research on Paris alignment to shed light on best practice and hopefully support decision makers in taking and implementing credible climate commitments.

From Aligning with Paris to the SDGs

Alice PAUTHIER

Public Financial Institutions can help make the post-covid response “just and green”

A Framework for Alignment with the Paris Agreement: Why, What and How for Financial Institutions?

World bank and IMF Spring Meetings: How can the reformed institutions play a leading role in funding the transition?

More and better finance: maximising positive climate impacts for a timely transition

Ambitious alignment with the Paris Agreement in public development banks