The Finance Ministers of 20 countries, representing nearly 700 million people threatened by climate change, announced a series of actions to strengthen climate resilience and low-emission development domestically and globally.
In their statement, the Ministers of the 'Vulnerable Twenty' (V20), commit to collective and decisive action, including by promoting the mobilization of climate finance, sharing best practices and engaging in joint actions.
8 October 2015: The Finance Ministers of 20 countries, representing nearly 700 million people threatened by climate change, announced a series of actions to strengthen climate resilience and low-emission development domestically and globally. In their statement, the Ministers of the ‘Vulnerable Twenty’ (V20), commit to collective and decisive action, including by promoting the mobilization of climate finance, sharing best practices and engaging in joint actions.
In their Founding Communiqué the V20 countries’ Finance Ministers establish the group to “serve as a new high-level mechanism for dialogue and action to concentrate attention on economic and financial responses to climate change through the dedicated cooperative efforts of economies systemically vulnerable to this global phenomenon.”
The Communiqué includes a Call to Action, in which the Ministers, inter alia: outline “an agreement entirely consistent with the non-negotiable survival of our kind” as the minimum deliverable for the UN Paris Climate Change Conference; express support to innovative revenue-generating fiscal and financial measures to finance climate action; and call for improved access to international climate finance from all sources.
The Ministers also agree to study the creation of a sovereign, trans-regional, public-private ‘V20 Climate Risk Pooling Mechanism’ that would: distribute economic and financial risks; improve recovery after climate-induced extreme weather events and disasters; and enhance security of jobs, livelihoods, businesses and investors.
The Communiqué was launched at the inaugural meeting of the V20, which took place on 8 October in Lima, Peru, during the 2015 Annual Meetings of the World Bank Group and International Monetary Fund (IMF), and was hosted by Secretary of Finance of the Philippines Cesar V. Purisima.
The V20 is an initiative of the Climate Vulnerable Forum (CVF), which met for the first time in Maldives in November 2009. In November 2013, under Costa Rica’s presidency, the CVF adopted an Action Plan for stepping up efforts by 20 vulnerable developing countries to “boost ambition and advance international progress on climate change through to 2015.” The meeting also decided to establish a “special focus group of ministers of finance of CVF countries” focusing on climate change issues.
The Philippines has served as the chair of the CVF since January 2015. The other V20 members are Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Barbados, Bhutan, Costa Rica, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Kiribati, Madagascar, Maldives, Nepal, Rwanda, Saint Lucia, Tanzania, Timor-Leste, Tuvalu, Vanuatu and Viet Nam. [CVF Press Release] [CVF Press Release on Action Plan from 2013] [V20 Founding Communiqué] [V20 Website] [World Bank Press Release] [UNDP Press Release]