During March and April, Climate Strategies convened our members for a series of discussion on the potential for a “Green Rebound”, helping to develop our ideas on how to mobilise the COVID-19 responses for climate neutrality.

You can read the full summary of each of our discussions here:

CS Members and Secretariat discussing the post-COVID-19 from a climate policy focus

While much of the discussion was exploratory, some concrete policy recommendations did emerge. Those that stood out to us the most have been captured and summaries here:

  • Any conditions on recovery packages from developed to developing countries should be co-created in a similar model to NDCs, which would further strengthen multilateralism;
  • Social capability building and bottom-up empowerment, rather than traditional debt relief, will increase the potential for longer-term, sustainable transformative change. Innovation and technology development can be improved through mechanisms similar to the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) and the EU innovation fund, to jointly address the crisis and development goals.
  • COP26 provides an opportunity to negotiate a new global financial goal, which could also include a public sector sub-target;
  • Governments can utilise the cooperative frameworks for the global sharing of intellectual property rights, which have been developed to find a vaccine, to increase technology transfers and cooperation, supporting multilateral climate governance;
  • State bailouts should have conditions ensuring corporations align with the Paris Agreement;
  • In some countries, introducing universal basic income may ease the complexities of the current need for an increase in state welfare, while also providing a social safety net for longer-term restructuring and just transitioning of major industries.