“Torrents” of money must urgently replace the “drip by drop” to finance the global ecological transition, the head of the UN Climate declared on Friday from Baku, where COP29 will be held in December.
“To reduce emissions and strengthen climate resilience, […] “finance is the factor that will determine the success or failure of the global climate fight,” said Simon Stiell, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), during a speech at the ADA University in Azerbaijan.
At COP28 in Dubai, the world agreed to “transition away” from fossil fuels and triple renewable capacity by 2030, but the agreement did not contain progress on unlocking financial flows to developing countries. development, a major sticking point in global climate negotiations.
“Without much greater funding, the climate victories of 2023 will quickly turn into new empty promises,” Mr. Stiell said.
Developing countries, not including China, have an annual need of “2.4 trillion dollars, if not more” between now and 2030 to achieve their climate and development objectives, he recalled.
But several obstacles sometimes combine for them: debt, inflation, lack of investor confidence or climatic disasters.
Financing this ecological transition promises to be one of the main themes of the climate negotiations in 2024 and during the meetings of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.
2024 is the year when multilateral development banks must take “concrete measures”, demanded Simon Stiell, in order to double or triple their investments by 2030.
“We need torrents of climate finance — not trickles,” summarized Grenada’s former Minister of Climate Resilience and Environment.
We must make an “Olympic effort” to put the world back on track, recognized Mr. Stiell, while most countries are failing to meet their current decarbonization targets, which are already insufficient to hope to limit global warming to 1.5°. C compared to the pre-industrial era.
Countries must define by COP30, in Brazil in 2025, an ambitious review of their national emissions reduction targets to be achieved by 2035.
In a climate already warmed by around 1.2°C, 2023 was the hottest year ever measured and 2024 could surpass it.
Greenhouse gas emissions must fall by 43% by 2030 compared to 2019 to hope to meet the limit of 1.5°C, set by the Paris agreement, according to the IPCC. Despite progress, global emissions have not yet started to decline sustainably.