Today, at the first ever Middle East and North Africa Regional Climate Week in Dubai, the UN High-Level Climate Action Champions kick-started the non state actors climate action agenda with the launch of their 2022 work programme.

Nigel Topping, the COP26 Champion, and the newly appointed Egyptian Champion for COP27 Dr Mahmoud Mohieldin, joined regional stakeholders from across the MENA region to share their reflections on COP26 and galvanise the non state actor community behind a shared vision of ambitious climate action on the route to Sharm El-Sheikh.

The work programme outlines the objectives and strategic approach of the Marrakech Partnership for Global Climate Action for 2022, representing a vast ecosystem of non state actors committed to addressing climate change and delivering a healthier, more resilient, zero carbon world in time.

Building on the work of the last year, the work programme has the following main priorities for climate action in 2022:

Strengthen and mainstream resilience

This ecompasses many projects including identifying the actions that non state actors can take to address existing and future climate losses, shifting the narrative on climate losses, and mainstreaming climate resilience through deepening engagement with resilience linked stakeholders. Much of this work will be delivered through the flagship Race to Resilience campaign.

Finance climate action

The Climate Champions will work to clarify the overall green finance architecture to drive alignment and synergy among the mobilisation of capital to emerging markets and developing countries. Building on this, they will explore financing resilience, including improved climate risk assessment and supporting private sector engagement; financing near term net zero implementation; and finally nature, including supporting more financial institutions to make and follow through on plans to eliminate agricultural commodities-driven deforestation.

Accelerate immediate climate action

Whilst all of the Climate Champions’ work is action oriented, this emphasis comes to the fore with two key pieces of climate action this year. Firstly with translating commitments to plans, and ensuring that Race to Zero campaign members’ pledges have clear plans and meaningful action with progress reporting. Secondly, delivering tangible progress towards the 2030 Breakthrough Outcomes through coordinated action across real economy sector value chains.

Building credibility and trust in non-Party stakeholders’ action

Across all this work, the Climate Champions are committed to strengthening the guidance and accountability of the global campaigns and clarifying tracking and reporting processes as part of our overall contribution to the call of the United Nations Secretary-General Expert Group on Net Zero.

As part of these collaborative efforts to accelerate climate action this year, the Climate Champions will also focus on three critical enablers to successfully drive the ambition loop, namely:

• Tracking progress, especially with aligning the tracking of actions by non state actors, formally feeding their inputs to the preparation and technical assessment components in 2022, and facilitating their input into the formal Global Stocktake of 2023. This will be done in close collaboration with the SB Chairs, the co-facilitators of the Technical Dialogue, and the UNFCCC secretariat to help ensure meaningful and effective non-State actor inputs into the process.

• Radical collaboration, specifically between national governments and non state actors in key regions to supercharge the positive ambition loop, and building and maintaining deep trusted relationships within the Marrakech Partnership stakeholders and others in the run up to and including at COP27.

• Regionalization of the non state climate action agenda by enhancing the participation of non-State actors in flagship campaigns, especially leveraging the Regional Climate Weeks throughout the climate action calendar.