Ahead of the One Planet Summit in Paris taking place tomorrow (12th) marking the two year anniversary of the Paris Agreement, Christian Aid said new finance for poorer countries was essential if the UN accord was to succeed.
Mohamed Adow, Christian Aid’s International Climate Lead, said: “It’s great that President Macron is getting the world together to celebrate the two year anniversary of the Paris Agreement but its success won’t lie in how well countries celebrate the day it was struck. To really honour it we need to see countries recalibrating their economies in line with the Agreement’s long term goal of decarbonising the world economy by 2050.
“We always knew the initial Paris pledges alone were not enough to keep global warming below 1.5C, but they started the ball rolling. To make it a success we need massive scaling up from that baseline. Thankfully at the UN climate summit in Bonn last month we switched on the ‘ratchet mechanism’ known as the Talanoa Dialogue, which will see countries accelerating their decarbonisation efforts.
“But the missing piece of the jigsaw is the funding to help the world’s poorer countries access clean energy so they don’t follow the fossil fuel powered path of the rich world. This is the missing piece that the One Planet Summit needs to begin to put into place. Without adequate finance there is no way developing countries can deal with climate change or decarbonise fast enough to deliver the Paris goals.
“What would help this would be for institutions like the World Bank to stop their fossil fuel investments which is only making the problem worse and use their huge financial resources to kick start much needed clean, renewable powered, development in poor countries.”
Ends
