COP27: At Sharm el-Sheikh, it was the smallest countries, Barbados, Vanuatu, Tuvalu, makng the biggest waves

Sprawling along the remote tip of the formerly contested and almost entirely desertified Sinai Peninsula, it is essentially an amalgam of luxury hotels with their own private beaches and still-being-completed holiday resorts aimed, without concession to taste, at the mass European and Middle Eastern cheap-flight tourism market.

Fresh from his unexpected triumph in the US midterm elections, Joe Biden inevitably attracted the largest media crowd.

In his inimitable monotone, he declared that the American Inflation Reduction Act - his administration's unprecedented package of climate change measures, which finally got through Congress in August - would enable the United States to meet its 2030 emissions targets, driven by investment in new technologies and American enterprise.

The president also declared the United States would provide more help to developing nations to combat a climate crisis that concerned "human security, economic security, environmental security, national security and the very life of the planet."

Climate wonks poring over the text could find little that had not already been announced, but the general uplift from Biden's presence was evident.

But even Biden was upstaged by Brazilian president-elect Luiz Incio Lula da Silva, fresh from an even more momentous election victory.

Under the far-right, Trump-imitating Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil went from climate leader to renegade destroyer of the Amazon, and the relief at Lula's return among the climate community is palpable.

He didn't disappoint. To chants of "ole, ole, Lula, Lula" from his compatriots, Lula strode in to the conference to declare that "Brazil is back!"

Without control of Brazil's Congress, the returning president may struggle to pass environmental legislation, but he promised to beef up security protection for forest lands and create a Ministry for Indigenous People.

Brazil would bid to host the 2025 COP, he said - and would do so in the Amazon itself. Castigating the developed world for its unmet promises, he made clear that he will be a regional and global champion for climate action.

If the big countries inevitably take up the largest space in UN climate conferences, there is always room at COPs for the small nations to make a mark.

It is one of the more remarkable features of the 30-year-old UN climate regime that decisions must be reached by consensus, which gives otherwise powerless countries a crucial role.

Coupled with the fact that these countries are victims of a climate crisis they didn't cause, this creates a rather unusual dynamic.

In Sharm el-Sheikh, Vanuatu and Tuvalu made early headlines.

They have been reiterating their request for an International Court of Justice ruling on the legal liability of rich countries and companies for the historical emissions that threaten their island existence.

The two countries have demanded that the world agree a "Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty" to manage the global phase-out of coal, oil and gas.

The most powerful speech at the Leaders' Summit also came from a small island. The Prime Minister of Barbados, Mia Mottley, was the standout speaker at last year's COP26, and this year retained her top spot in the unofficial charts with another remarkable and insightful contribution.

Mottley's rhetoric transfixed the hall. "We have the collective capacity to transform," she told the heads of government sitting in the rows of seats in front of her.

"We're in the country that built pyramids. We know what it is to remove slavery from our civilisation ... to find a vaccine within two years when a pandemic hits us ... to put a man on the moon."

Mottley's core argument was that the international financial system isn't working for the poor and middle-income countries, like Barbados, that want to move to net zero emissions and cope with the devastating climate change they are already experiencing.

They can't access the finance or the technology to do so. She laid the blame squarely on the World Bank, the IMF and their developed country shareholders.

"This world," she said, "looks still too much like it did when it was part of an imperialistic empire."

Mottley is not content with rhetoric, however. Over the last few months she has been promoting a new plan for financial reform dubbed the Bridgetown Initiative after the Barbados capital in which it was hatched with her adviser, economist and former investment banker Avinash Persaud. And it gained increasing traction at COP27.

At the core of the plan are three reforms that between them could galvanise more than US$1 trillion of new finance for climate-compatible development, including emergency help to countries hit by extreme weather events, and low-cost lending for emissions reduction investments.

The first is to get the World Bank, along with the other multilateral development banks in Africa, Latin America and Asia, to use their capital base more expansively.

A recent expert report commissioned by the G20 group of nations found that between them these banks could lend an extra US$500 billion or more if they slightly relaxed their risk appetite and capital accounting procedures and better used government guarantees.

Second, Barbados wants "disaster clauses" to become standard in all sovereign debt contracts.

These stipulate that if a country borrowing money from private or public creditors experiences a predefined extreme weather event, all its repayments will be postponed for two or more years. Such clauses would immediately release millions of dollars for disaster relief and reconstruction and public service budgets. Creditors get repaid on a later schedule, but with the interest they have lost made up, removing any financial loss.

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Third, Mottley has called for a new IMF trust fund to back lending for emissions reduction investments. Developed countries with strong currencies can borrow on international markets at 3 to 5 per cent, most developing countries - including relatively stable, growing ones such as India and South Africa - face interest costs at least three times higher.

The new fund would auction its lending to projects that can achieve the highest and fastest emissions reductions.

These reform ideas are not the only ones circulating at COP27.

The V20 group of climate-vulnerable nations has produced its own suggestions for new financing mechanisms, and innovative ideas are being produced by academics and civil society organisations.

French President Emmanuel Macron duly called for an expert group to look at the Bridgetown Initiative and other proposals and make rapid recommendations to the international financial institutions and their shareholder nations next year.

And in the negotiating sessions that have followed, ministers from other countries went further. Several have called for a review, not just of individual funding mechanisms, but of the entire international financial system.

Many countries are today experiencing once again the problem of the dominance of the US dollar. As American interest rates rise, their own currencies are depreciating, making imports more expensive and raising the cost of dollar-denominated borrowing.

Another global debt crisis looms, with more than forty countries in or at risk of debt distress. When the United States catches a cold, one delegate noted, the rest of us get flu.

So an even bigger agenda is beginning to make its way into COP speeches and debates. The present international financial system and its institutions were designed in 1944, in a very different economic and political world. Nearly 80 years on, they could do with a refresh.

No one is yet claiming Sharm el-Sheikh will one day be as famous a venue for international financial reform as Bretton Woods. But the seeds are being planted.