Abstract

This high-level COP30 side event will explore how debt reform, risk-informed infrastructure investment, and innovative partnerships between governments, development banks, private insurers, legal experts, and civil society can unlock sustainable finance for Small Island Developing States (SIDS) and Least Developed Countries (LDCs). It will highlight how integrating debt sustainability and resilient infrastructure planning can deliver fiscal stability, accelerate adaptation, and strengthen long-term economic resilience in vulnerable economies.

1. Background

Small Island Developing States (SIDS) and Least Developed Countries (LDCs) contribute the least to global greenhouse gas emissions yet face the greatest fiscal and physical exposure to climate change. Many of these economies are already in or near debt distress, spending more on external debt servicing than on adaptation, infrastructure, or social protection. Climate-induced disasters further erode fiscal space, driving countries into cycles of rebuilding, borrowing, and vulnerability. Unlocking sustainable finance for climate-resilient infrastructure is therefore central to achieving long-term adaptation and economic stability.

The Debt Sustainability Support Service (DSSS) offers a systemic approach to addressing these interlinked challenges. It brings together debt reform, risk-layered protection, and resilience investment under one framework to ensure that climate finance contributes to both fiscal and physical resilience. By integrating tools such as debt-for-climate swaps, climate-contingent clauses, and resilience-linked bonds, DSSS provides countries with practical mechanisms to reduce debt vulnerability while creating fiscal space for investment in adaptation and resilient infrastructure. The platform is being advanced through partnerships with the insurance and legal sectors, multilateral development banks, regional development banks, philanthropic actors, and technical partners to support implementation across SIDS and scale up similar efforts in LDCs and other vulnerable economies.

Complementing this, the Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure (CDRI) is advancing the Disaster Resilient Infrastructure (DRI) Action Agenda, a global framework to guide countries in embedding resilience into infrastructure systems. The Action Agenda promotes integrated approaches that combine data, technology, and governance innovation to strengthen the design, financing, and maintenance of infrastructure systems. By aligning national infrastructure pipelines with resilience principles, it ensures that new and existing infrastructure can withstand climate shocks and support sustainable growth.

In parallel, civil society and research institutions play a critical role in linking fiscal resilience to local realities and ensuring that resilience investments deliver social and community benefits.

Together, the DSSS and the DRI Action Agenda create a powerful alignment between financial resilience and infrastructure resilience. Embedding debt sustainability and infrastructure resilience into the strategies of multilateral development banks, national planning systems, and climate funds will be key to achieving the objectives of Article 2.1(c) of the Paris Agreement, making finance flows consistent with a pathway toward climate-resilient development.

2. Key objectives of the event and session focus:

The session will convene leaders from SIDS and LDC governments, multilateral development banks, the insurance and legal sectors, and private and philanthropic partners to explore three central questions:

• • How can debt reform, fiscal innovation, and legal instruments unlock finance for climate resilient infrastructure?
• • What models can integrate the DRI Action Agenda and risk analytics within national investment frameworks and climate fund programming?
• • How can public, private, legal, and philanthropic actors collaborate to scale resilience linked finance for SIDS and LDCs?

By bringing together these perspectives, the session will highlight actionable pathways to embed DSSS principles and DRI frameworks within global and national financing architectures. It will also identify opportunities to mobilize private and philanthropic investment for resilient infrastructure, ensuring that vulnerable economies can transition from debt-driven fragility to sustainable, climate-resilient growth.
Through the discussion, the session will aim to:

• • Build consensus on supporting SIDS and LDCs to ensure debt sustainability and infrastructure resilience within national adaptation and financing strategies.
• • Discuss ways to ensure policy, legal, and institutional uptake of debt sustainability and resilience investment as a complementary mechanism to the Santiago Network and the Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage, providing pre-disaster fiscal protection and supporting long-term adaptation planning.
• • Identify pathways to mobilize blended, private, and philanthropic capital for climate-resilient infrastructure through resilience linked instruments and innovative financing models.
• • Strengthen global advocacy and coordination toward COP31 and other international processes, including the G20, that promote debt reform, resilient infrastructure, and sustainable finance for vulnerable economies.

3. Agenda

• 1. Welcome and Opening (10 min)
  • Ritu Bharadwaj, IIED
  o Welcome participants, introduce session objectives, and outline how the Debt Sustainability Support Service (DSSS) and the Disaster Resilient Infrastructure (DRI) Action Agenda are converging to align debt reform and resilient infrastructure planning for SIDS and LDCs.
• • Ramesh Subramaniam, Global Director – Programmes and Strategy, Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure (CDRI)
  o Present the DRI Action Agenda as a global framework for embedding resilience in infrastructure design, financing, and maintenance, and highlight opportunities for collaboration through the DSSS–DRI partnership.
• 2. Keynote Address (5 min)
  • Mr, Kaltong Luke, Head of Climate Finance, Vanuatu Ministry of Finance and Economic Management, Republic of Vanuatu
  o Building fiscal and infrastructure resilience: priorities for SIDS under the Paris Agreement and beyond.
  o Highlight the urgent need for debt and infrastructure resilience to be treated as complementary priorities for achieving long-term adaptation and sustainable development.
  o Call for stronger alignment between debt relief mechanisms, resilience finance, and international cooperation under Article 2.1(c).
• 3. Science, financing, legal, and risk perspectives: Scaling sustainable infrastructure finance (25 min)
  Purpose: Discuss how debt reform, legal action, and risk analytics can unlock and scale sustainable finance for resilient infrastructure across SIDS and LDCs.
  Panellists: • Bart van den Hurk, Co-Chair, IPCC Working Group II
  o Provide a science based framing on how increasing climate extremes and compounding risks are intensifying fiscal and infrastructure vulnerability in SIDS and LDCs. Highlight IPCC insights on risk informed planning, adaptation limits, and the need for systemic responses linking science, policy, and finance.
  • Valerie Herzog, Climate Change Specialist, OPEC Fund
  o Role of multilateral finance in creating resilience-linked instruments and supporting debt reform for infrastructure investment.
  • Ben Webster, Associate Director, Centre for Disaster Protection (CDP)
  o Insights on how risk financing, early warning systems, and disaster protection instruments can strengthen fiscal resilience and enable pre-arranged finance for vulnerable economies.
  • Matt Holmes, Group Head of Political and Government Affairs, Zurich
  o Leveraging insurance and risk analytics to de-risk investment and mobilise private sector participation in resilience finance.
  • Harj Narulla, Barrister, Doughty Street Chambers, London
  o Drawing on his leadership in the ICJ advisory opinion how international legal frameworks can advance debt and climate justice, promote accountability for climate-related harm, and create enabling conditions for resilience investment.
  
• 4. Country and Regional Perspectives: Integrating Fiscal and Physical Resilience (25 min)
  Purpose: Showcase how countries are addressing debt, climate vulnerability, and infrastructure resilience together, and identify emerging needs for fiscal innovation and support.
  Panellists:
  
  • •H.E. Ruleta Camacho Thomas, Climate Ambassador, Government of Antigua and Barbuda
    o National leadership in embedding debt sustainability within climate and infrastructure planning; experiences from the DSSS initiative and regional collaboration in the Caribbean.
  • • Abdihakim Ainte, Director, Food Security and Climate Change, Prime Minister’s Office, Somalia
    o Managing climate and fiscal shocks in fragile settings; linking debt reform with resilience and food security investments.
  • • Bhim Adhikari, Senior Program Specialist, IDRC
    o Evidence and learning on the economic returns of resilience investments and how philanthropic and research partnerships can catalyse scalable models.
  • • Emiliano Milanez Graziano da Silva, Instituto Fome Zero (IFZ), Brazil
    o Lessons from Latin America on aligning social protection and resilient infrastructure to reduce fiscal vulnerability.
• 5. Reflections and way forward (10 min)
  Moderator: Tom Mitchell, Executive Director, IIED
  
  • o Q&A with participants o Summarise key takeaways from the discussion, including priorities for integrating debt and infrastructure resilience within global and national financing frameworks. o Highlight next steps, including advocacy opportunities toward COP31 and G20 discussions on sustainable finance and resilient infrastructure. o Invite closing reflections from H.E. Ruleta Camacho Thomas on advancing the SIDS-led agenda on debt and resilience.