Sostenibilidad

Imagine waking up in any Colombian city in the mid-century, let’s say the year 2045, with access to 100% renewable energy for a warm shower and having breakfast with coffee from sustainable and low-carbon crops. Think of people heading to work riding an electric or regular bicycle - more affordable and faster - without worrying about traffic or air pollution. Picture cities built on green infrastructure, managing and reusing all waste -organic waste for fertilizers and energy generation and recycling other high-value materials for the economy.

According to the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report, finance, international cooperation and technology are critical enablers to accelerate climate action.

Have you ever wondered how projects financed by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) are supervised in accordance with our socio-environmental policies and guidelines? Or even, what is the purpose of such supervision?

Our mission at the IDB is to improve lives through the projects we finance, the technical assistance we provide and the knowledge we share. To achieve this, all our partners need to understand the environmental and social risks and impacts to which development projects are exposed and the best ways to address them.

December 2023 will mark the 8th anniversary of the adoption of the Paris Agreement (PA). Since then, progress has been made toward the treaty’s goals. In Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), sustainability-linked bonds reported under the Green Bond Transparency Platform over the past two years have achieved the avoidance/reduction of over 36.5M tCO2, - a figure roughly equivalent to 2019 passenger emissions from intra-regional commercial aviation in LAC!

Pride Month provides us with an opportunity to remember that, while there is much to celebrate, there is still a long road ahead. The progress of the last decades highlights the importance of articulated work at local and regional levels to detect how discrimination and stereotypes around gender identity and sexual orientation are produced and reproduced.

As leaders gather in Paris this week fora summiton tackling climate change, and how our global financial system should evolve to be part of the solution, skeptics may wonder whether most of the world’s cash-strapped countries really have the incentives and the capacity to do much. After all, even wealthy countries are struggling to address what is undoubtedly the most serious, and expensive, shared challenge of our age.

Getting to net-zero emissions is essential to achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement. A key question is how much carbon pricing can help reduce emissions, stimulate low-carbon investment, and fund emission captures. Indeed, carbon pricing generates various expectations. Some expect carbon pricing to incentivize technological change consistent with full decarbonization. Others aim at using carbon pricing to raise revenues and mobilize private financing that can eventually be channeled to environmental investments in the region.

Green hydrogen (GH) has the potential to be a game-changer in the transition to a low-carbon economy. It is emerging as a key player due to its versatility and sustainability and as a promising alternative to decarbonize the “hard to abate” sectors, such as heavy industry, transport and energy, which account for more than 50% of the world’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

Food safety is the absence of chemical and/or biological toxins in food that can affect consumer health. Only safe foods meet dietary needs and contribute to active and healthy lives for all individuals. However, each year, over 400,000 deaths are caused by foodborne illnesses (WHO, 2023).