Paris talks to focus on funding poor countries to tackle climate crisis | Climate crisis | The Guardian

Source: Paris talks to focus on funding poor countries to tackle climate crisis | Climate crisis | The Guardian

…Macron believes current systems of development finance, including overseas aid from rich countries and climate finance to help poor countries cut their greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to the impacts of extreme weather, are not delivering results.

“The fight against poverty, the decarbonisation of our economy in order to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050, and the protection of biodiversity, are closely intertwined,” he said, setting out the terms for the two-day summit. “We therefore need to agree together on the best means to address these challenges in the poor and emerging countries of the developing world, when it comes to the amount of investment, to comprehensive reform of infrastructure like the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and public and private funds, and how to set a new process in motion.”

Mia Mottley, the prime minister of Barbados, will also play a leading role. Her proposals, known as the Bridgetown agenda, are aimed at massively expanding the funding available to developing countries, particularly those afflicted by the climate crisis.

Mottley has fiercely criticised the World Bank, IMF and similar institutions, most of which were set up in the final days of the second world war, calling them unfit for the 21st-century task of tackling the climate crisis and drawing countries out of debt and poverty. “The international community’s responses are currently fragmented, partial and insufficient,” she said. “We therefore call for a fundamental overhaul.”

Calls have been growing from many countries, including the US, the EU and UK, for an overhaul of the World Bank. The former president David Malpass, appointed in 2019 by the then US president, Donald Trump, resigned earlier this year after deepening controversy over his apparently climate-sceptic views.

The summit will be the first major international outing for his successor, Ajay Banga. Banga, a former Citigate banker and ex-chief executive of Mastercard, is seen as likely to open the institution to widening partnerships with private investors, and shake up the bank’s attitude to the climate and related crises.