This blog explores how financial innovation—particularly blended finance—can support the implementation of the global plastics treaty. Drawing from real-world examples like seaweed-based plastic alternatives, it highlights the need for coordinated investment strategies to scale circular solutions and drive treaty goals.

Catalytic’s June 2025 newsletter shares updates on climate finance, new initiatives, funding calls, and innovations in blended finance.

Municipal solid waste in developing countries is often poorly managed resulting in high methane emissions and environmental harm. While carbon finance offers a promising tool to improve project viability by monetizing emission reductions, current mechanisms remain insufficient and carbon finance must be complemented by performance-based mechanisms and embedded within a supportive policy, regulatory, and institutional framework to address systemic inefficiencies and attract sustainable investment.

At Catalytic, we work across the investment continuum – from project development to fund incubation – to address these gaps.Waste management is a cross-cutting sector in our initiatives, often embedded in climate mitigation, urban resilience, and marine conservation strategies.

On International Day of Forests

​

​

​

Catalytic Finance Foundation has officially become a member Sustainable Finance Geneva (SFG)!

​

Jiao Tang, Catalytic's COO, is a waste management finance expert. In our first “Humble Op-Ed”, she proposes a new way to finance waste management infrastructure in developing countries; using concessional capital to cover OPEX instead of CAPEX.

NGOs are using their expertise to devise innovative approaches that leverage both public and private sector resources.

As of the 22nd of June, we will be known as the Catalytic Finance Foundation.

​

AS an NGO that has observer status to the UNFCCC, R20 will be present at COP27 in Sharm-El Sheik.

​

The “Action Plan for the Mediterranean, an exemplary sea in 2030” (PAMEx 2030), is an initiative of French President Emmanuel Macron.

R20, with its new flagship initiative: the Subnational Climate Fund (the SCF), a blended finance impact fund formed to pursue attractive risk-adjusted returns for private investors while generating measurable and certified climate, environmental and social impacts, has concluded with ISWA an updated MoU that aims to accelerate the building of sustainable waste management infrastructure, especially in countries where landfilling and dumping of waste is a common practice.

R20, on behalf of the SCF Technical Assistance (SCF TA) team, organized four regional webinars per SCF region to present the project submission platform as follows:

R20 Foundation organized a session on the theme of “Blended Finance for Infrastructure Investment” at the Innovate4water event, held in Geneva on the March 2, with the following presentations:

On February 10, Christophe Nuttall, Senior Advisor of R20 and his team presented the Subnational Climate Fund to the President of ORU Fogar, Rachid el Abdi. This fund is dedicated exclusively to regional projects to face the challenges of climate change, with projects in the field of renewable energy, waste management, water sanitation or agriculture.

During COP26, SCF representatives participated in panel discussion focused on mobilizing private sector capital for climate action. The event showcased the Subnational Climate Fund (SCF) which seeks to invest in low-carbon and climate resilient infrastructure in developing countries and the Global Fund for Coral Reefs (GFCR) which aims to invest in ocean-based mitigation and adaptation projects that benefit coral reef resilience.

R20 took an active part in the IUCN Local Action Summit. The Summit was organised to showcase and galvanise the efforts of subnational governments and their partners to deliver positive conservation outcomes. It has made the case for investing in nature-based solutions as part of a green recovery.