Essay by Eric Worrall
“… about 70% of that needs to come from the private sector…”
Q&A: How COP26’s UN High-Level Champion for Climate Change sees the world’s climate progress so far
Nov 4, 2022
Lucy Almond
Head of Strategic Communications, Tropical Forest AllianceNigel Topping, the UN’s High-level Champion for Climate Change for COP26, shares his views on where climate action is succeeding with the World Economic Forum.
According to Topping, about $2 trillion a year more is needed in emerging and developing economies, excluding China, to confront climate change effectively.
…
What’s the big picture on the amount of money needed for the nature-positive agenda – and who’s going to have to come up with it?
Nigel Topping: This is about investing for higher productivity and job growth, so I reject the framing of ‘who’s going to have to come up with it’. My question is: Who’s going to make money if they problem-solve to find ways of structuring nature-positive investments that provide returns?
In terms of how much? It’s complicated. But about $2 trillion a year more is needed in emerging and developing economies, excluding China. About 70% of that needs to come from the private sector. Look at Africa, where a large majority of people are working in agriculture. There’s a huge need for investment in smallholder farmers, but also in small- and medium-size enterprises (SMEs). For example, a really exciting start-up in Nigeria is making solar-powered cool boxes that massively reduce food waste while moving vegetables around in a hot, humid country. As well as investing in companies that provide services to the market, we need to provide loans to SMEs that are the backbone of the food system in emerging markets. There’ll be a lot of focus on that at COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh.
So yes, this is about investment from multinational partners, but also crucially from participants in the value chain and local companies. Remember, this is a growth story, so there’s a reason for investing in changing practices.”
…Read more: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/11/cop27-united-nations-climate-change-progress-nigel-topping/
At least they said, “excluding China” when discussing who is supposed to receive the “investment”.
The reality of course is the reason countries are poor is usually that their kleptocrat leaders keep stealing all the cash. Cash handouts rarely help the recipients, unless you mean the personal bank accounts of the corrupt elites who usually run those poor countries which keep demanding handouts.
If you have any doubts about this, I recommend you read Kenyan economics expert James Shikwati’s “For God’s sake, please stop the aid”.
via Watts Up With That?
November 7, 2022