In a recent interview with CNN anchor Anderson Cooper, Bill Gates agreed that climate change was the toughest challenge humanity had ever faced: “It's way greater than the pandemic. And it needs a level of cooperation that would be unprecedented."

A cooperation framework does exist, but taking it to another level as Gates envisions is an uphill task. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) has been the main global forum for many years, but it is still struggling to concert climate actions, including the pending issue on global carbon trading and the perennial question on climate finance pledges from developed countries.

Despite this discouraging fact, we are also seeing that the actions of other international institutions and forums on climate change are converging. In the economic sphere for instance,, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and the Group of 20 (G20) have put climate change on their agenda.

So how do we take these seemingly divided platforms to a higher level?

The world has witnessed how difficult it is to attain deliberative commitments across the globe on climate action. Commitments on climate finance are even more difficult. Implementing climate programs is a costly endeavor, so pushing developing countries to take climate action without financial assistance would be unjust and next to impossible.

On the climate financing issue, despite its experimental stage, the Coalition of Finance Ministers on Climate Action offers a cooperation approach to step up climate action. Financing will determine the degree of victory in the climate change battle. Economic policies should therefore take climate change into account and be aligned with the Paris Agreement.

The coalition has an opportunity to shape the way the world handles the climate issue. It was established in April 2019 in response to the limited space for finance ministers in the UNFCCC, which is seen more as a forum for negotiation and politics. The coalition should, however, complement and strengthen the UNFCCC rather than creating another climate forum stream. Since its founding, 52 finance ministers have joined the coalition and developed its charter.

Just recently, Indonesia was elected as a cochair of the coalition along with Finland. While this appointment reflects international recognition of Indonesia’s domestic climate efforts and commitment, it must be aware of the challenges for climate action at the global level.

First is to change the paradigm. A paradigm shift is needed to deal with climate change, especially to influence the way finance ministers view climate change and incorporate it in their economic policies. The coalition’s leadership could become a catalyst for encouraging finance ministers, who have strong capacity and hold a mandate to manage macroeconomic and fiscal policies, to consider climate change in all aspects of the decisions they make. In this regard, providing several examples of the measures the Indonesian government has taken on climate change adaptation and mitigation will help it convince coalition members that a new paradigm can be implemented.

Second is to boost the coalition’s impacts. As a non-binding forum, the coalition is, by its very nature, relatively loose in terms of commitment. It may rely more on peer pressure in promoting its agenda through members sharing their experiences and best practices. Unfortunately, this may not be helpful in creating collective actions that lead to real impacts. There must be a series of strategies for its members to adopt to transform peer pressure into global governance policies. The coalition could learn from the G20 forum, which has been relatively successful in enforcing its agenda despite being essentially a discussion forum.

Third is to connect the dots. The coalition’s new leadership must link its agenda with relevant climate agendas across other global forums. For example, the World Bank has launched the Action Plan on Climate Change Adaptation and Resilience that requires all its projects to be screened for climate and disaster risks. The IMF has also recently integrated climate into its annual country economic assessment, in the Article IV consultations. In addition, the G20 has also initiated environment taxes and sustainable finance as part of its climate change mitigation strategy.

Connecting the coalition’s agenda with those of other forums will help generate effective efforts and avoid unnecessary actions at the same time. Of course, this will add to the coalition’s existing challenges of combining the interests of developed and developing countries among its membership.

In addition, being at the helm of global action on climate change will thrust Indonesia into the new arena global ecopolitics, or international relations centered on sustainable economies that concern not only an ethical approach to natural resource and energy access, but also climate change and its impacts.

Again, this is no easy task for Indonesia, considering the complexities of political economy as regards climate action. However, this does not mean that it is impossible for Indonesia to succeed in its new mandate. We have learned from the past that the spirit of togetherness among nations will help it realize the common agenda as a coalition leader.

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The writers are senior policy analysts at the Finance Ministry’s Fiscal Policy Agency. These views are personal.

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