At Glasgow, companies pledge $130 trillion for green transition

GLASGOW, November 3

With national leaders gone from the UN climate conference in Scotland, attention turned on Wednesday to the state treasuries and the businesses and financiers responsible for carrying out the pledges to cut emissions and build infrastructure.

Among the most vexing questions are who should pay and how the funds can be channelled through the financial system quickly and effectively. A major goal will be to attract more private money.

The issues are so important that organisers dedicated all of Wednesday for executives and public finance leaders to discuss them. The Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero — an umbrella group that includes all major Western banks as well as insurers and asset managers — announced that firms responsible for managing $130 trillion in capital, equivalent to 40 per cent of the world’s financial assets, had signed up to assuming a “fair share” of decarbonisation. UN climate envoy Mark Carney, who pulled the alliance together, said it needed to find creative ways to channel private money purposefully into investment that advanced the UN-backed drive for ‘net zero’ greenhouse emissions by 2050.

“The money is here but that money needs net zero aligned projects and then there’s a way to turn this into a very powerful virtuous circle,” he said. — Reuters

Don’t ignore Tibet: activist from himachal

New Delhi: A young activist has urged world leaders not to ignore Tibet, a region from where 10 major rivers of Asia originate and is currently undergoing massive environmental damages. “The Tibetan plateau is melting, yet the world remains silent. If I were Greta Thunberg, I would say, ‘How dare you ignore Tibet!’ Glaciers in Tibet are melting, rivers are shortening,” Yeshi Dawa, an activist from Dharamsala, Himachal Pradesh, said in a video on his social media handle. IANS

UK’s £100-million commitment

The UK is committing 100 million pounds to making climate finance more accessible to developing countries and helping to increase the volume of “green bonds” to finance climate-friendly projects.