World leaders gather in Colombia for the first multilateral conference on phasing out fossil fuels, Banco do Brasil prices what it calls the first benchmark-size nature bond from by a commercial lender, and the NGFS short-term scenarios sharpen the picture of European climate risks.
Santa Marta conference brings together ‘coalition of the willing’
More than 50 governments – including the UK, Brazil, Germany, Nigeria and Canada – met this week in the Colombian port of Santa Marta for the first multilateral conference dedicated to phasing out fossil fuels. The conference was initiated to break the deadlock in UN climate negotiations on this topic by creating a “coalition of the willing”. The world’s three largest emitters – China, the US and India – did not attend; neither did Russia, Japan or Saudi Arabia.
The conference, co-hosted by Colombia and the Netherlands, is taking place outside the official UN process and against the backdrop of an energy price shock triggered by the US war on Iran.
Officials are using the meeting to discuss preferential trade arrangements for countries moving away from oil, gas and coal, and to develop national transition roadmaps, the Financial Times reports.
A draft roadmap for Colombia, prepared by officials with members of the UK Climate Change Committee, suggests fossil fuel demand could be cut by 90% between 2026 and 2050 if US$10bn in upfront annual investment is delivered. Net economic benefits are estimated to start from 2024, with annual savings exceeding $20bn by the end of the transition, according to Piers Forster, director of the Priestley Centre for Climate Futures at the University of Leeds.
Banco do Brasil prices first commercial nature bond
Banco do Brasil has raised $500mn on international markets specifically to fund the restoration of degraded land. The commercial bank priced the deal – which it describes as the first benchmark-size nature bond from any commercial financial institution – on 16 April, attracting $2.5bn of demand, five times the offer size.
The 5.5-year senior bond carries a 5.625% coupon and a 5.875% yield, the bank said in a statement. Proceeds will fund soil restoration and improvements to agricultural productivity on degraded land, easing pressure to convert new areas to grow food.
“With this operation, Banco do Brasil expands its portfolio of financial instruments aligned with climate and socio-environmental commitments,” said Geovanne Tobias, the bank’s vice president of financial management and investor relations.
A year of extreme weather could cut national GDP by 7.4%, Banque de France warns
A succession of severe heatwaves, droughts and wildfires in Europe could knock 7.4% off French GDP in a single year, according to a new Banque de France blogpost. Applying the NGFS’s short-term climate scenarios, authors Paul Champey and Léopold Gosset show that France would be hit harder than the EU average loss of 4.8%, although less severely than India (-7.8%) or China (-7.7%) under equivalent regional shocks.
Production losses on that scale would push European inflation up by as much as 0.7%, posing what the authors describe as a dilemma for the European Central Bank (ECB), as tightening to fight inflation would risk weakening the recovery.
Under a delayed “sudden wake-up call” pathway, which models a delayed and disorderly transition, European inflation rises 3.1% above baseline in 2027 as carbon taxes climb from $120 to nearly $200 a tonne, with key European interest rates potentially rising a further 100 basis points in 2028.
Climate Arc and LSE launch corporate resilience platform
A new platform launching at London Climate Action Week in June will, for the first time, give investors a standardised way to benchmark major companies on how well they are adapting to climate shocks. ResilienceArc – developed by Climate Arc with the London School of Economics’ Earth Capital Nexus and Cross Dependency Initiative – is an open-access prototype linking asset-level hazard data with company-level decision-making.
The tool covers floods, extreme heat and drought, and benchmarks how well firms are adapting their factories, infrastructure and land. Climate Arc says the tool is designed to give finance, insurance and policy leaders intelligence on “not just where companies are exposed, but how well they’re adapting”.
Research highlights
The political economy of China’s green transition
Review of International Political Economy
China’s dominance in green technologies is too often attributed solely to state subsidies, obscuring the complex political economy dynamics at play. In this article, political economists Jackson and Larsen propose three analytical shorthands for making sense of factors that shaped the nation’s climate wins: green authoritarianism, green state-steering and green economic planning. The authors use this framework to explain how China’s political model, central-local-private relations, and industrial policy have together driven the transition.
Critical minerals and clean energy applications: the role of innovation across the supply chain
OECD
Supply chains for lithium, cobalt, nickel and rare earth elements are concentrated in a handful of countries, creating acute geopolitical and environmental risks. This OECD working paper maps the innovation landscape from mining to recycling, and finds that technological, organisational and policy innovation is central to securing cleaner, more diversified supply chains, and that stabilising long-term investment conditions is essential to enabling it.
Taking the wheel: steering Africa through the risks and opportunities of maritime decarbonisation
LSE Firoz Lalji Institute for Africa & African Climate Foundation
Maritime transport carries 90% of Africa’s international trade by volume, yet African nations already pay above-average freight costs. This policy brief by Liz May and Richmond Boakye Dankwah warns that the International Maritime Organisation’s proposed net-zero framework risks deepening those inequalities. It urges African policymakers to move from passive observer to coordinated negotiating bloc before November’s crunch vote.
This page was last updated April 30, 2026
Written by
Ike Walker, a Green Central Banking contributor since 2023, has a decade's experience in research writing. An Utrecht-based scholar, Ingrid specialises in transformative justice, green finance, law and systems change. They are an Utrecht University's Bright Minds scholar and previously worked for Cambridge University and various justice-based NGOs.
