In June 2024, ecbi Director Benito Müller introduced the proposal for a Climate Solidarity Alliance to a meeting of the Climate and Development Ministerial (C&DM) at Wilton Park, at the invitation of Christopher Bartlett from Vanuatu. In his pre-recorded message, which kicked off the session, Müller explained that the idea of such an alliance is based on a 20-year-old proposal for an air passenger levy to support developing countries deal with climate impacts through adaptation. While the original idea was for a global levy for adaptation, Müller explained that Saleemul Huq, who sadly passed away last year, suggested resurrecting the proposal as a Climate Solidarity Levy for Loss and Damage.

However, he said a global levy would have to be adopted by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), which would want to keep the revenue for itself to green the aviation sector. Thus, the current proposal calls for a voluntary Climate Solidarity Alliance of national and subnational actors who would be able and willing to adopt a Climate Solidarity Levy for Loss and Damage now. At the subnational level, for example, a USD 5 charge per passenger would enable the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey to collect USD 600 million annually. During the event, many of the participants supported the view that the private sector is only a partial solution, and that public scaling of finance is still critical.

The C&DM process was initiated in 2021 by the UK to provide a forum in which to unite and support climate and development ministers to find solutions to address the priorities of climate-vulnerable countries.
Technical and then political C&DM discussions throughout 2023 led to the launch of a Coalition of Ambition on Adaptation Finance at COP28. The process was supported by climate finance experts, coordinated by IIED and E3G, and funded by philanthropies. 

The meeting at Wilton Park provided the opportunity to review progress and further advance three workstreams ahead of the next ministerial meeting later this year. Specific objectives of the meeting were to:

• Identify best practice in developing programmatic approaches to adaptation finance, and agree practical proposals for how countries can support andintegrate long term adaptation approaches across sectors and with communities;
• Create space for constructive dialogue between funds, LDCs, SIDS and donor governments on climate finance reforms, including those related to accreditation processes and access timescales, and agree clear recommendations and actions; and
• Bring together key constituencies working on private sector finance for adaptation to aid the development of a common understanding of the challenges and opportunities of scaling adaptation finance from the private sector, and agree practical steps for moving this forward.