Remarks by the President of the General Assembly,
H.E. Ms. Annalena Baerbock,
Meeting of Circle of Finance Ministers,
14 November 2025, Bel¨¦m, Brazil,?
[Check Against Delivery]
Dear ministers,
Dear colleagues,
As we are here with finance experts, let us talk numbers.
For you know better than most, that the world tends to go where the money flows.
And we know that in a world of abundance, the availability of money as such is not the problem; it is how that money is allocated and invested.
Yes, we need an incredible amount ¨C over 200 billion dollars annually – for adaptation alone.
Yet consider that developing countries paid about 1.4 trillion US dollars in external debt servicing last year.
Imagine what that money could achieve if that burden were eased and funds remobilised toward climate mitigation, clean energy, resilience, and adaptation.
This is especially critical for the most climate-vulnerable nations, which every year spend billions rebuilding after disasters.
Hurricane Maria in 2017, for example, wiped out roughly 226 percent of Dominica¡¯s GDP in a single instant.
Recently, the devastation caused by Hurricane Melissa across the Caribbean, and by Typhoon Fung-wong in the Philippines, demonstrated once again how years¡¯ worth of infrastructural development can be destroyed within hours.
Globally, such disasters directly account for at least $200 billion in annual losses; some estimates have this at $2.3 trillion when other cascading costs are factored in.
These are schools, hospitals, livelihoods, all gone in an instant.
Therefore, more than ever, it is now urgent to make good on our promises, including the commitment made at COP26 to double adaptation finance to around 40 billion US dollars annually.
And let us recall: this is not charity. It is sound economics.
Helping countries invest in resilience, preparedness and stronger infrastructure protects lives, reduces long-term losses and strengthens economic stability.
Every dollar invested in resilience avoids multiple dollars in reconstruction.
And it helps build the foundations for societies to thrive.
Those foundations are strengthened when governments improve investment frameworks to de-risk climate projects and attract private capital.
And when the private sector is encouraged to see such investment not as generosity but as a pathway to long-term stability and shared growth.
We know what the needs are, and we know what the potential is.
Now, Bel¨¦m has given us the roadmap to connect them.
The Baku-to-Bel¨¦m Roadmap to 1.3 trillion identifies new sources of finance to mobilise an additional trillion dollars annually for developing countries by 2035.
It is built around five priorities, the ¡°5Rs¡±: Replenishing, Rebalancing, Rechanneling, Revamping and Reshaping.
Together, they form a practical framework for governments, international institutions, and private investors to translate ambition into action.
Some may say that 1.3 trillion US dollars is too ambitious.
But we have done hard things before.
Progress once thought impossible is now measurable.
Global investment in clean energy now exceeds investment in fossil fuels, and more than one in five new cars sold worldwide is electric.
A decade ago, the world was heading toward roughly 3¨C4 degrees of warming by the end of the century; today we are closer to 2.6.
While this remains short of the 1.5 degree goal, it proves that when political will, finance and innovation align, transformation follows.
If we sustain this momentum ¡ª if we translate the outcome of COP30 into national budgets, fiscal reforms and new investment pathways ¡ª the 1.3 trillion-dollar ambition becomes achievable, and 1.5 degrees can remain within reach.
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