Simon Stiell: International climate finance must grow up to meet this moment
Baku, October 17, AZERTAC
“International climate finance must grow up, step up, and scale up, to meet this moment,” said Simon Stiell, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), as he addressed an online event of the Global Economy and Development Program at the Brookings Institution.
He further added, “On Monday, the World Bank Annual Meetings begin. They are once again a huge opportunity to create change.
Because multilateral development banks will be at the heart of this transition. Just this week the World Bank announced more concessional lending for climate. And the IMF is looking at ways to incorporate climate action and risks right across their work.”
“This is good news. But incremental increases won’t lead to an exponential surge of investment and green growth. On climate finance, we have a need for speed, and without much larger scale, all economies will fail.
So many countries are facing debt crises that amount to fiscal straight-jackets, making it near-impossible to invest in climate action,” Stiell then noted.
The Executive Secretary concluded: “At the Annuals, we must see further signals that the World Bank and IMF are committed to ensuring developing countries have funds and fiscal space for climate action and investment, not devastating debts and sky-high costs of capital.”
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