“We have been progressing since 2015”, estimates on franceinfo Monday, November 1 Rémy Rioux, director general of the French Development Agency, former negotiator at the COP21 in Paris. Six years after the historic signing of the Paris Agreement, the international community is in Glasgow, Scotland for the 26th Conference of the Parties (COP26) to accelerate the fight against global warming. “We still invested $ 1 trillion between 2015 and 2020” to finance the ecological transition, he said.
franceinfo: You were one of the negotiators for COP21 in Paris. Will COP26 limit global warming?
This is an important meeting, because we fixed in the Paris agreement that every five years, we would take stock of where we are in the fight against global warming. It’s not quite the same as Paris, where we set the framework, the treaty that guides us. We see the usefulness of COPs, because everyone has their say, and States are called upon to do more.
Almost no country is keeping its Paris Agreement commitments …
You remember that four years ago Trump’s United States left the Paris Agreement. Russia and Turkey had not signed it. The second, fourth and fifteenth emitter of greenhouse gases. They represent 20% of all greenhouse gases. The good news this year is that they are here.
“Everyone is in the room, and we can hope to complete a number of points of application of the Paris agreement which are under negotiation.”
Rémy Rioux, Director General of the French Development Agencyto franceinfo
So we succeeded in a very difficult geopolitical context to preserve the framework of the Paris agreement. We are on a 2.7 ° C increase, if everything that has been announced is implemented, we will rather be on 2.2 ° C, so all the same we have been making progress since 2015.
Is the money there in sufficient quantity, are the States putting enough money in their pockets?
There is a first subject which is the commitment made in Copenhagen and then in Cancun in 2009 and 2010 to bring 100 billion dollars each year from 2020 from the countries of the North to the countries of the South. The latest figures given by the OECD tell us that we are at 80 billion in 2019, and probably not much above in 2020.
It is absolutely essential in Glasgow that we create trust with the developing countries. Americans are expected, they represent 25% of the world economy and contribute insufficiently. But the real subject is the transformation of the financial system as a whole, both the banks and private investors, and then the public development banks that I will represent.
Over 1,000 billion dollars awarded each year by states in the form of subsidies for activities that harm the environment, is it not terrible?
People need to get around, to get warm, to eat. Governments have sometimes put in place budgetary mechanisms that are unfavorable for the climate. When energy prices become a little lower, governments need to switch these budgetary resources back to good investments, especially renewable energies.
We hear a lot “must”, but we must also do …
I have a signal of hope. I chair a club of development banks called IDFC, you have 26 public development banks, the largest, which finance the transition in their own countries. We nevertheless invested 1,000 billion dollars between 2015 – the COP21 – and 2020. The French Development Agency is keeping France’s commitment, which was $ 7 billion to the countries where we operate, therefore 115 countries in the world.