IMF, COP28 President-designate call for action on climate finance

From Abubakar Yunusa Abuja

The International Monetary Fund, COP28 PresidentDesignate and UN Special Envoy for Climate Action and Finance have called for measures needed to accelerate climate action and finance.

This is contained in a statement issued by the IMF Press Centre, a copy of which was obtained by the News Agency of Nigeria on Wednesday in Abuja.

The statement said Kristalina Georgieva, Managing Director, IMF, and Dr Sultan Al Jaber, COP28 President-Designate, cochaired a roundtable discussion on Tuesday to discuss actions needed to urgently accelerate climate action and finance.

Mark Carney, UN Special Envoy for Climate Action and Finance and co-Chair of the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero also co-chaired the discussion hosted at the IMF.

It said participants at the roundtable included representatives from governments, international financial institutions, development banks, philanthropic organisations, and private financial institutions committed to net zero.

According to the statement, climate change is one of the most critical macroeconomic and financial policy challenges that IMF members face in the coming decades.

It said capital was among the most important enablers of climate action, but not enough was getting to the people and places that need it most.

“As massive global investments to reduce emissions and boost resilience are required, we need a major shift to harness public and, especially, private financing.

“That includes substantially more concessional finance that can lower risk and drive private sector finance more efficiently to emerging and developing countries.

“It also requires that both public and private sectors finance all components of the energy transition.

It said this included both the scaling of clean energy and the managed phaseout of fossil fuels in an accelerated time frame.

The statement said to achieve the above objective, all countries need robust climate policies that