Adapting to Climate Change in Fragile and Conflict Settings: Opportunities for Scaling Action

[Anna Bjerde] Good morning, everyone, and welcome to this room, which is also the World Bank Pavilion. I'm really excited to be here, and I want to thank all of you for being here. I want to thank everybody who's with us online. My name is Anna Bjerde. I'm the Managing Director for Operations at the World Bank. I'm really, really happy to be here moderating this session today. It's an incredibly important topic, which is going to talk about climate change in fragile and conflict-affected settings. I think what you'll hear today is that there is a very, very good reason to be focusing on climate change in FCV countries, and I will leave it there. But I will be very, very blunt about this, which is that the countries that are fragile and in conflict affected settings are the ones that bear the biggest brunt of climate change. We'll come back to some of this, but I do want to just share with you a few numbers that the World Bank is tracking. 15% of the World Bank list of fragile and conflict affected settings overlap with the 25 most climate exposed countries in the world. That's a pretty strong overlap. What makes matters even worse is that we estimate that a failure to address climate change, fragility and conflict could push as many as 130 million people into poverty by 2030. Yet, the countries that are most vulnerable to climate change also receive the less international support to reduce the impacts of acute shocks or adapt over the longer time. That means that we must collectively step up our game, accelerate climate action in fragile and conflict affected settings, focusing on activities that have the proven potential to scale up. The role of IDA, of course, is very important. It's the World Bank's fund for the poorest, and it cannot be emphasized enough the important role that IDA has to play. We've been a leading provider of funds for climate adaptation in low-income countries. I wanted to just mention one very, very important number before I go and introduce the panel here. IDA has scaled up financing for adaptation in settings affected by fragility and conflict. And get this, roughly three-hundredfold from 10.7 million in 2016 to 3.1 billion in 2022. But we still need to do more. What we're going to do today is very much focus on talking about what is it that we have to do, what is it that we have done, what can we do differently, how do we work through partnerships? I'm delighted to be joined by four distinguished guests. We have Her Excellency, Carla Louveira, the Deputy Finance Minister of Mozambique. Thank you so much for being with us. I'm very pleased to have Robert Mardini, Director General of the International Committee of the Red Cross, ICRC. Thank you for being here. And also, David Miliband, President of the International Rescue Committee, IRC, thank you so much, David, for being here. We're hoping to be joined very soon by His Excellency, Salah Jama, the Deputy Prime Minister of Somalia. But if I may, Minister Louveira, I might start with you. My question to you is for you to share a little bit of time with us to really drill down on what is it that the government of Mozambique is doing to promote resilience and social cohesion in northern Mozambique in the face of what we talked about, these overlapping threats of fragility and conflict.

[Carla Louveira] Thank you so much. Good morning, everyone. First of all, allow me to say thank you for the World Bank for the invitation made by the government of Mozambique to be here in this panel and to make some notes on the experience that we have managing this situation of facing climate change and setting conflict, and resilience environment in the country. I would like, first of all, to say that and to remember all of you that Mozambique is one of the countries that is most affected by climate change. However, it is also among the countries, one of the least contributors to the climate change impact in the world. For example, we have in the last 35 years, almost 52 natural disasters that took place in the country. Also, we’ve had 25 floods, 14 tropical cyclones that we experienced in the country as well, 13 drought events. It leads to the country becoming the fifth country most affected by the climate events during 2000 until 2019. Actually, according to the Global Climate Risk Index, Mozambique was the country most affected by the climate change in 2019 when we had the Kenneth cyclone in the country. On the other side, we also have been facing since 2017, attacked by terrorists in the north of Cabo Delgado, particularly in the Cabo Delgado province in the north of the Mozambique country. All those situations have been creating a very huge impact on our social, economic, and production activity in the country, but particularly in the north in Cabo Delgado. Those conflicts are creating a forced displacement of people, almost around 1.3 million population. There is a need for the government of Mozambique to implement some measures in order to face this situation, but also taking into consideration the climate change impact that we have in the country. It's why all our actions has been taking place in two different directions. One is on the approval of design and the approval of a strategic plan for the reconstruction of the north side of the Cabo Delgado, the north side of the country, particularly in Cabo Delgado, but also improve the coordination mechanism. In terms of design, the strategic plan, we have designed two main plans. One specifically for Cabo Delgado that we call PRCD, that is Reconstruction Plan for Cabo Delgado. It is a short to medium-term plan, but we also have a medium and long-term plan for the entire north side of the country that we call Integrated Program to Development and Resilience of the North Side of Mozambique. Shortly, we call it PRDIN. Based on these two programs, we divide the two of them and three main pillars that was in order to address not only the conflict issues, but also, the climate change situation. One of them is the humanitarian pillar. It's the pillar that we address humanitarian and peace building community creation environment in the Cabo Delgado in the north side. But we also have a second pillar on the infrastructure as well. It's where we are putting all actions in order to reconstruct the social, economic and particularly public administration building. In this particular pillar, we are trying to ensure that the reconstruction or the construction of new buildings, they are climate resilient infrastructure. We also have the last pillar of this two programs and plans that is related to the economic and financial activity where we create a very specific activity trying to address the population in order to create returning populations to their original place of living, but also, in the host areas because many of the people moved from some specific district from Cabo Delgado affected for the ones that was not totally affected, but also, to the other parts of the north side of Mozambique. Our action plan is not only to address the results in the district affected by the terrorism in Cabo Delgado, but also in the host communities as well. These three main pillars were the ones that we are addressing. And then last is on the coordination, structural mechanisms that we implement in order to have a very good communication within the government side on the central, provincial, and local level, but also our communication with our partners in a horizontal level. All these central, provincial, and local level, we have communication with our partners. We mean by partners, the World Bank, but also other development cooperation partners as well as UNDP. Those are the main actions that we have been putting in place.

[Anna Bjerde] Thank you so very much, Minister. Two quick reflections. One is something I myself have talked a lot about, which is that we need to be in dual speed. We need to be able to deal both with crisis, but also lay the grounds for the medium term, which I think the way you're approaching this planning with the different pillars and the coordination sets you up very nicely. And on the coordination specifically, I really appreciate you mentioning that something that often gets forgotten, but it's the coordination across that makes the difference on implementation, which is where we, of course, want to take the plans and make sure we see the results. I'd like to welcome very much and very warmly the Deputy Prime Minister of Somalia. Thank you so much for being with us. I was going to ask my next question to you, but I'm going to let you settle in a little bit and I'll come back to you momentarily. I'm going to turn to you, Robert. I would like to talk to you a little bit about perhaps a specific country where we're working very closely, which is Yemen. The World Bank and ICRC are working together and we're really looking to both promote resilience, but also address, of course, what Yemen has been going through for many years and that continues to be affected by conflict in specific communities. If you could share with us, what do you see as some of the priorities that we need to focus on together to scale up the impact of our joint work, but to help the people of Yemen?

[Robert Mardini] Thank you very much, Anna. Yemen is a country that is very close to my heart. When I was a water engineer, I remember 2007 in the Saada province doing a water project we were faced to the big conundrum of the water table declining by seven meters every year. I think this is the reality of so many countries in the Middle East where the water scarcity was not triggering the conflict in Yemen, but it was really exacerbating patterns of violence, displacement, and also feeding into the broader pattern of the conflict. Local action that is conflict-sensitive can really come a long way in contributing to easing some of the tensions at the local level. I'm so happy that our partnership with the World Bank materialized in Yemen in the field of livelihoods, because today Yemen remains heavily affected by decades of conflicts, exacerbated by the new layer of conflict that started in 2015. But people have gone deeper in poverty. The fact that we are now working together on this project of vaccinating 20 million livestock in four years is a significant contribution. Livestock for people in Somalia amount to their bank account. They are their security, their food security, and their financial security. I think this is a testimony to how when we joined forces with an IFI like the World Bank, we can make a difference that goes way beyond what a humanitarian organization can do. We are doing a lot in terms of now strengthening the resilience of communities affected by conflict and climate. I was talking with the minister. In Cabo Delgado we rehabilitated a main water treatment plant because it was affected by the conflict and there was massive displacement, increasing the demand on water infrastructure for communities receiving the repeated shocks of floods and storms. But we did a master plan to guide other actors to complete and to complement this work because it's not for us to do it. In Yemen, back to Yemen, all the work in terracing, water harvesting in a water-scarce country is also something that will contribute to reinforcing the resilience of communities and make them better equipped to absorb those repeated shocks and more frequent shocks and more intense shocks of climate in a country where peace is still very elusive, unfortunately.

[Anna Bjerde] Thank you so much. Again, I think you have an underlying challenge, which is water security, water scarcity, which has been, of course, a perennial issue in Yemen. Add to that, the high level of conflict, of displacement, of people being affected, poverty on the rise, and how we can work together. I very much like this humanitarian development, as we call Nexus. It's quite blurry, but it's focused on the same thing, which is to help people both in the short crisis moment, but also to build better lives. Thank you so much. Now, I would like to very much turn to you, Deputy Prime Minister Jama, and talk a little bit about Somalia. Of course, we know Somalia faces intertwined threats, and this is something we see in many countries, from food insecurity, from climate change, fragility and conflict, but also forced displacement. We were hoping that you could share with us any good examples or any successes on the climate side that are helping communities deal with these overlapping threats from climate fragility and conflict. Over to you.

[Salah Ahmed Jama] Thank you very much. First of all, before I address the problem at hand, I would like to give you the most current scenario in Somalia. I think increasingly Somalia is recovering in so many different fronts. As the World Bank would know, by the end of this year, Somalia would be completing its HIPC initiative. Our debt relief agenda that took us almost a decade, 5 billion dollars would be completed and the decision point would be reached. Secondly, Somalia has recovered politically and there is more stability with time. We have a national development plan that has at the core of it a poverty reduction strategy. There are a lot of good programs that the World Bank is doing with us, from Social Safety Nets, Social Protection. I used to be the Minister of Social Affairs and for the first time we have a National Social Safety Net in collaboration with the World Bank. A single social registry, things that we didn't use to have. There are massive reforms in terms of state capacity for us to be able to carry out projects that are transformative. Perhaps one of the key projects in collaboration with the World Bank I would like to mention is a project called the Biyoole Project. It is for water management, water catchment, water preservation. I think it has been very handy for many communities in Somalia, in the agrarian and pastoralist communities. However, there is the need to scale up and increase programs of such nature. Just to give you more context, as we speak, almost one-third of Somalia is under floods, while we were dealing with droughts not that long ago. As we make gains and positive developments in the development front, in the political front, in the security front, more importantly, we are also defeating Al-Shabaab and waging a very extensive war. Al-Shabaab is recovering a lot of land and districts from them. But as we make those progresses, climate change has the potential and has shown to have the potential to undo much of our hard-earned gains. And that is where the topics, the ones that you have addressed today, which talk about the need to have a tailored and customized approach to countries that are emerging from fragility, from conflict, from food insecurity, need to be managed and dealt with in a different manner. To finally conclude, and I think my friend Mr. Miliband here would agree with me, there are a set of countries ranging from Somalia to those in the Sahel that are the most affected by climate change and the most vulnerable without contributing much to green gas house emissions, yet they receive the least in terms of climate finances. The type of climate finances we're talking about is small-scale interventionalist humanitarian climate financing, but not a transformative infrastructural problem. The issue of Somalia is water. As others here would agree with me, water management, water preservation. Finally, about a couple of dozen bridges over the Jubba River and those on the Shebelle River have been broken down. These were bridges that were in place for the last 50 years, 60 years. Some of them were built by the Italians, the previous governments. To fix those things is not something that an NGO can do. In an era of debt stress and post-HIPC recovery, such projects would need billions of dollars. We are hopeful once we come complete debt relief, we will have access to consensual loans that would invest in massive infrastructure. The answer to Somalia's climate crisis is not reactive, is not responsive, is not dealing with emergencies, but rather more preventive resilience programming. That is where the research done by the IRC and others have shown that perhaps it is better to use early warning systems, use more preventive measures and more collaborative community and state-level engagements. Thank you very much.

[Anna Bjerde] Thank you so much. I think fighting on so many fronts, active conflict, climate change, but also a macroeconomic adjustment process with the HIPC process is a lot. As you talk about the need to do prevention and resilience building it’s so important to make sure that the infrastructure that is built is actually resilient for the future. But you also mentioned a study that was done recently by IRC. David, I'm going to turn to you, which is exactly that. That IRC recently released a report on priorities for promoting action in settings affected by fragility, conflict, and violence. I was wondering if you could share with us some of the main recommendations coming out of this report on how countries can support climate adaptation and the financing needed in countries that are also affected by conflict.

[David Miliband] Well, thank you very much, Anna. As an organization that focuses on people whose lives are shattered by conflict and disaster, we're really honored to be on this panel with such a distinguished group of ministers, Robert and yourself. You mentioned the Nexus of humanitarian development, and that word has become a quicksand. From our point of view, humanitarian action is the first step towards development. Stopping things getting worse for people or helping things get better for people make humanitarian action the first step to development. The epicenter of the climate crisis is the 16 countries that you mentioned, the most climate-vulnerable countries. But those 16 countries are also the epicenter of the poverty crisis. We're here under the slogan “ending poverty on a livable planet”. These 16 countries are becoming less livable and they represent 60% of total global humanitarian need in those 16 countries, including Somalia, Sudan, South Sudan, Mozambique, Afghanistan, Yemen, you've mentioned. We have a double responsibility here and our report talked about action in four areas and I emphasized the word action because we're going to be supporting today a declaration that the first ever COP Declaration on climate and conflict. But as we know from the previous 27 COPs, the words may seem hard in the negotiating room, but when they don't turn into action, there's double the problem. The action that we recommended was in four areas, and we really must make sure that we have a bias to action on this. Number one, both the ministers have spoken about the different situations in different parts of their country. We have no excuse now for not doing proper risk mapping of different parts of fragile and conflict states that face different kinds of climate and conflict interaction and crisis. We have the many different data sources. We need to bring them together fast because without proper risk mapping, anticipatory action is impossible. Second, the innovation that's needed in fragile and conflict states at the micro level that both the ministers referred to, is urgently needed. I'm afraid to say the climate movement and the humanitarian movement have not done a good job at jointly making and sharing innovation, whether it be on farmer information systems, seed strengthening in fragile states, anticipatory cash for affected communities. Thirdly, and I think this speaks to the area of scaling, we've got to get over the view that partnering with civil society is some exceptional accommodation that requires a round of applause. It’s great what you're doing in Yemen with the ICRC, but let's normalize the idea that partnering with civil society is the responsibility of the multilateral sector. It shouldn't be exceptional. In every country that we work in, there are dozens and dozens and dozens of sites of conflict and climate crisis where civil society has got to be part of the answer if there's going to be any answer. We really plead with you in following the poverty numbers to follow the people who are organized in civil society, sometimes with international NGOs, sometimes with local NGOs, because at the micro level, that's key. Then the fourth recommendation, the final, and I want to emphasize we come to this fourth, not first, because usually NGOs, the first recommendation is more money. We're saying unless you do the risk mapping, unless you do the innovation, unless you do the partnering with civil society, you're not going to be able to spend the money. But we do need to align climate money and humanitarian money in new ways, or for the first time ever, really. We're strong supporters of the G20 panel's recommendation that IDA needs to be trebled because it's good that IDA is going up, but it's not going to the fragile and conflict states at the moment, as you said in your introduction. We think there's an agenda for action in those four areas that can unite all the different players here, the governments, the multilateral NGOs, the multilateral development banks. We've got to make sure that we follow the poverty because already 50% of the world's extreme poor are in these fragile and conflict and climate affected states. It's going to be 60 %, etc. We really are big fans of the new dynamism that you and Ajay Banga have brought to the World Bank's efforts, but all of the multilateral development banks need to be on this bus.

[Anna Bjerde] Thank you so much, David, and thank you for producing reports that help us think through some of these issues. I must say last time we met, you got me thinking a lot about how do we deliver together in difficult places. I do think it's very important to keep in mind in some places, the most effective delivery mechanism is in fact not the World Bank or government or other agencies. It is the CSOs who actually have reach where we don't have reach or where there's also trust issues. I really do appreciate it because at the end of the day, we want to make sure we arrest degradation in human capital and development gains and set the path for the future. Really appreciate it. I'm going to come to a second round of questions now and I'm going to come back to you, Minister. What do you think can be done to ensure vulnerable communities, including displaced populations and host communities, which you also mentioned, have access to infrastructure and resources to protect lives and support economic opportunities?

[Carla Louveira] Thank you. I think that we have work in two different directions. First is to try to find the right partners. And what I mean by partners, it's not only external partners from the country itself that is suffering from the shocks, but also the internal one. It's why we are trying to, in Mozambique, deliver a mechanism where we can coordinate not only with the responsibilities of the government itself, where we have also responsibility to reconstruct and ensure a resilient ecosystem, but also, coordinate with our partners in order to see what we can do better in order to improve the setting in the ground. The other side is to find a very clear financial model that we can implement in the country in order to ensure that in the next situation, threats that we have in the future, we are better to organized in order to face them. It's why we are trying on one side to leverage the resilience mechanism allocation that we have from some partners as World Bank as well, but also the FDB program and other programs that are working on the resilience side. We are also creating by law a disaster management fund that is implemented by a specific entity in the country that's responsible to manage the disasters in the country. Those specific funds, we have a request from the internal regulation that comes from the budget, the specific amount that we must provide annually to this budget. But also, we have an open source for other partners to contribute for this specific fund, which ensures that in any additional situation of shock that we face on the climate side, we are able to minimize. Actually, we also introduced a financial protection strategy that specifically has a side of other actions in order to face the fragility and climate shocks. We have a sovereign risk management mechanism implemented, and for this particular mechanism, we are working with two directions for this particular moment. One is the one that we are working with the African Union that we call Africa Risk Capacity in order to face the shocks on the drought event particularly. But we are also working with the World Bank as well for the shocks related to cyclones and precipitation as well. We think that all these kinds of financial mechanisms will strengthen our country in order to face the next shocks that we have. But we believe that we must continue to cooperate and coordinate within the different partners, multilateral, bilateral, internal, private sector as well, in order to improve the mechanisms that we are putting in place to ensure that the next situation we have a better capacity in order to face. Actually, in terms of the innovation that was mentioned, and these mechanisms that we are putting in place also with the World Bank under the NCRP, that is the Cabo Delgado and the Northern resilience mechanisms that we are putting in place. We also have a management information system, this electronic system where all partners, including the government, put all information inside in order to manage all actions that we are putting in place in order to face and solve the fragility situation on the climate and also the terrorist side. They are the main issues that we believe that we can put in place in order to...

[Anna Bjerde] Thank you so much. I think it’s very clear that you are not treating a shock when it comes any longer. You're going to plan for it upfront. That's something we have also found that we have to stop treating these crises as a crisis because we now have learned that we're living in a world where crises are more and more frequent and shocks are more and more frequent and we have to be better prepared for them. Robert, I'm going to come back to you and talk a bit about the strong connection that ICRC has with local communities and specifically talk about what are some of the ways we can address barriers that we see to scale up adaptation initiatives in local settings with local communities.

[Robert Mardini] Thank you, Anna. The four action points of your report, David, really resonate in concrete terms. I think the biggest challenge is how to take to scale those initiatives at local level. We published a report at ICRC, Weathering the Storm, where we took three countries and three cases: Mozambique, the Gaza Strip, that was before the conflict, and East Niger. In those countries, we developed projects and activities to really strengthen the resilience of communities. We followed your action points, David. There is no way you can build a sustainable response without engaging with communities. The risk mapping, actually, the risks are flagged by the communities. This is the masterpiece of the risk mapping. Then you have a whole range of solutions from protecting rice cultivation against floods to protecting grazing lands against wildfires in places like Niger, but also in Gaza, where you have to engage with local water authorities. Those are, yes, connected in a way or another to Hamas, but you have to work with them in order to ensure the continuity of water supply. You need to work with farmers on the frontier of the Gaza Strip to equip them to be able to farm despite heat waves and protect their crops, protect their animals. I think if we look at all the ingredients for those solutions to be successful, they have to be tailored to the reality of the location and the risks are flagged by the communities. They need to be conflict sensitive and try to really build on the resilience of people and their vulnerability in order to make sure that it will equip them to absorb shocks. Third, and I think this is the main parameter to unleash the potential and to take to scale, is the partnership with local organization, with local authorities, and also with international financial institutions, where I think the notion of risk appetite should be recalibrated. Because today, if we take the people that are most vulnerable, they live in areas that are not controlled by governments, that are controlled by armed groups. Some of them are listed by the Security Council and this is a major obstacle. They should be, and we didn't manage to crack that nut. I'm not saying it's easy, but this will come a long way in delivering responses at scale for those communities where governments are not able to deliver services. It's as simple as this. We need to continue working on this and work on deeper, smarter partnerships beyond the humanitarian sector. We came here and at ICRC we are not fundraising for more projects. We are advocating for climate action and climate finance to reach those communities and those places of the earth. We're here to help.

[Anna Bjerde] Thank you so much. Mr. Deputy Prime Minister, I want to come to you with a bit of a specific question around a very big topic that many of the COPs, many of the meetings that we go to focus on, which is climate financing. Can you share with us some of your thoughts on what are some of the priorities for climate finance in Somalia, and how do you see the responsiveness, the need for responsiveness of climate finance to support building resilience and adaptation against the shocks of climate in Somalia?

[Salah Ahmed Jama] All right. I think that's a very good question, and I am in full agreement with many of the important observations made by my co-panelists here, particularly the four priorities mentioned by Mr. Miliband here. In the last couple of days, I went to a series of meetings, one on global stock exchange, stock take, the other on climate financing and means of implementation. I think we are increasingly coming to forget the reason why these areas such as climate finance, capacity building, and technology transfer were identified as the main vehicles or tools for helping developing countries to cope with climate change. It is a bit indeed ironic that we are saying after the 28th COP that many of these countries don't have the capacity to implement. In Somalia, in the last drought, a couple of billion dollars were spent primarily through NGOs to save lives. A very noble cost at that. But after three months we're dealing with excessive floods and there are no dedicated funds through climate finances to address these fundamental structural issues that are not crises per se anymore, but certainties. Next year, unfortunately, this could certainly repeat itself in a similar way, but maybe even with a much higher scale. That is the context with which I would like to situate my observations. Somalia has the longest coastline, over 3,300 kilometers. It has two rivers. It has 60 million livestock. The poor people that you see, that the world is trying to help, are not people that were poor to begin with. This is a camel herder, a livestock herder, a farmer that was forced to become poor overnight. For me, despite being a refugee at one point and being under the UNHCR and appreciating the role of non-governmental organizations and civil society entities, as Mr. Miliband has mentioned, I think the only missing link in the equation is the role of the state. What distinguishes a kid living in Niger, in the Sahel, in Africa, from one living in Switzerland or Sweden, is the nature of the state they live in and the role it plays in enabling, not necessarily executing projects, but creating the enabling environment for individuals, mothers, households, and communities to have access to resources that can make them a bit more resilient. For instance, we have over 3.5 million Somalis that are displaced and they are in a protracted situation for the last 30 years. Increasingly, after every climate shock, the number increases. I do not think that without… it needs things like housing, it needs things like massive infrastructure of roads, hospitals, settlement, resettlement. That is not something that a small NGO that is there on an interim basis and not permanent basis can resolve. My challenge to the international community, to practitioners is we are for collaboration, but the solution will come primarily from the communities and it must be led, initiated, strategized by the state. We could come up with all kinds of fancy documents like the NDI, a National Adaptation Plan, a national IDP settlement plan. But without the resources, it is not going to cut. To conclude, with over 5 billion dollars anticipated for Somalia every year to cover climate change, we're only getting about 300 million dollars. As David would say, for every one person there is a couple of dollars spent on it. While the amount of money being spent on the humanitarian crisis is increasing, my conclusion is in agreement with my panelist here, this needs a coordinated, synergized approach among the states, international civil society organizations, bilateral and multilateral development banks, and other actors, donor community, to find durable solutions. There are IDB camps that have been in there for the last 20, 30 years. If NGOs could fix something, they would have fixed that a long time ago. The NGO cannot get the land for them. They cannot find the security for them. They can only help them survive on a day-to-day basis. But long-term solutions have to come from their state. I think states like that of Somalia are now in a position to work with their partners in a very proactive and productive manner. Thank you.

[Anna Bjerde] Thank you so much. David, I'm going to ask you to take the last question. You've done a lot of thinking, I know, on delivery, delivery models. I wanted to ask you, how do you see humanitarian and development players can work together to actually speed up our response and get more impact?

[David Miliband] I think I'd like to say two things to answer that question directly. The first is to follow the minister from Somalia, the deputy Prime Minister. We've got to build a positive sum game between government and civil society. That's the trick. You rightly said, Anna, models of partnership, plural, and models of civil society engagement. It will be different in Somalia from Niger from Yemen. That's a good thing, not a bad thing. I really want to emphasize the urgency of being clear what those different models are. In some places, we are doing technical advice to the EBRD about engaging refugee communities in Jordan for a waterworks program. That's a very light touch civil society engagement. In other areas, the state has no access, the UN has no access, and so it takes civil society to reach people. Point one, let's build positive sum games that are appropriate to local context, recognizing that, as both ministers have said, there are multi-billion-pound projects that only state structures can do, but there's also reach and outreach that only civil society can do. Point one. Point two, and this is I suppose the hardest thing, we've got to increase our risk appetite because at the moment, the stalling, the slowness, the unspent money, let's be honest about this, there are pledges and there are commitments that are never spent. It's risk appetite that is getting in the way. How do you overcome the problems of risk appetite? One, you use trusted partners. Two, and critically, you use proven trusted models of intervention. Let's not be afraid of evidence-based interventions. We know that cash has been demonstrated through randomized control trials to be able to have big impact. We know malnutrition programs that work through randomized control trials. We've just done one in Mali. Let's use the proven programs to give confidence to the fundholders, and let's use trusted partners to give confidence to the fundholders, that they need to get over their risk aversion. Because the truth is the risk aversion is short-changing the people who are dependent on the action. That's why we talk about a bias to action, not to taking undue risk, but to embracing the people who actually need us to take action.

[Anna Bjerde] Thank you so much, David. With that, I'm going to wrap up this panel. I want to summarize with just three very quick points which build and I think very much pick up on what we heard as takeaways also from the panel. Number one, the importance of partnerships here and of being partners and recognizing that we need to have very much the input of the local community to understand what their needs are. But then different partners can do different things. I think that was put very well by the Deputy Prime Minister of Somalia Who said there are certain things only the state can do, but there are also certain things that in hard-to-reach areas only certain actors can reach. I think that came through very clearly. Partnerships, different models for different settings, but underpinned by input from the communities who are affected and bear the brunt of the impacts. Number two, I thought the very good descriptions from the Minister of Mozambique, talking about the need for very robust plans, but also starting to think before crisis happens about what needs to be in place, including the funding, which I think is very important. That's why the World Bank is thinking now very much through crisis response and crisis response tools to be able to be much quicker to help our clients when situations get into this. Number three, I do want to just finish off on this issue that we ourselves, by 2030, see that 60% of the world's extreme poor will be living in fragile and conflict-affected settings, which means that our new playbook, which you may have heard about, needs to take into account this challenge, this development challenge, and therefore, come up with the tools, the instruments, the financing, and work with partners to be able to help people who need us the very most. With that, thank you so very much for being with us today. Really appreciate it and a huge appreciation to the panel. [Audience applauds]

00:00 Welcome

03:34 Resilience and social cohesion in northern Mozambique

10:53 World Bank and ICRC: Joint work in Yemen

15:07 Dealing with climate, fragility and conflict threats in Somalia

20:38 Supporting climate adaptation in countries affected by conflict

26:49 Access to infrastructure and resources in Mozambique

31:48 Scaling up adaptation initiatives in local settings with local communities

35:32 Priorities for climate finance in Somalia

41:30 Joint work between development and humanitarian players

44:29 Closing remarks