Show us the money: Developing world at COP27 seeks climate finance details
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Getting money to low- and middle-income countries so they can build infrastructure has long been a focus for the UN climate talks, but progress has been slow.
PHOTO: AFP
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SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt - Finance took centrestage at the COP27 climate talks on Wednesday,
A US$3 billion water transfer project between Lesotho and Botswana and a US$10 million plan to improve the public water system in Mauritius were among dozens of projects listed, including 19 in Africa.
“We can now show that a meaningful pipeline of investible opportunities does exist across the economies that need finance most,” Dr Mahmoud Mohieldin, one of the United Nations-appointed experts, known as UN Climate Change High-Level Champions, said in a statement to accompany the report.
In an effort to answer the argument by private sector financiers that it is too risky to invest more in emerging markets, the experts, who help the COP host-governments engage with business, pulled together a list of projects that could be funded more quickly. COP stands for “Conference of the Parties” which signed up to the original UN climate agreement in 1992.
After a year of meetings with stakeholders around the world, they released the initial list so that banks and others can assess the projects.
“We now need a creative collaboration between project developers and public, private and concessionary finance, to unlock this investment potential and turn assets into flows,” said Dr Mohieldin.
However, another report released on Tuesday suggested that developing countries would need to secure US$1 trillion in external financing every year by 2030, and then match that with their own funds, in order to meet the world’s goal of preventing runaway climate change.
Getting money to low- and middle-income countries so they can build infrastructure, such as renewable energy plants needed to replace fossil fuels, has long been a focus for the UN climate talks. But progress has been slow.
“Even though the pipeline of interesting projects is there, they will require technical and financial help to get to a position where they can attract the right kind of finance,” said Mr Nigel Topping, also a High-Level Champion.
“We need all actors in the system to roll up their sleeves to make that happen,” he said. “We won’t get anywhere near unlocking the scale of finance developing economies need if everyone continues to pass the buck.”
The world’s leading development banks lent US$51 billion to poorer countries in 2021, with private investors contributing US$13 billion, a recent report from the lenders said. REUTERS
