Politicians exit COP26, $130tn worth of financiers take the stage

UK’s £100 mn commitment

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The UK is committing 100 million pounds ($136 million) to making climate finance more accessible to developing countries and helping to increase the volume of “green bonds” to finance climate-friendly projects.

‘Don’t ignore Tibet’

New Delhi: A young activist has urged world leaders not to ignore Tibet, a region from where 10 major rivers of Asia originate and 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 in Tibet are shortening,” Yeshi Dawa, an activist based in Dharamsala, Himachal Pradesh, said in a video sent out on his social media handle. “Dear world leaders, always remember that Tibet’s environment belongs to the whole world and not just China. It affects all 7.9 billion people on this planet. Please think about Tibet for the sake of this planet,” he further said. IANS

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.

A main aim of the COP26 talks is to secure enough national promises to cut greenhouse gas emissions, mostly from burning ubiquitous fossil fuels, to avert the worst climate disasters by keeping the rise in the global temperature to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

But how exactly to meet those pledges, particularly in the developing world is still being worked out. Above all, it will need a lot of money.

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, very powerful virtuous circle – and that’s the challenge,” he told the summit.

He said $100 trillion of investment were estimated to be required over the next three decades.