Just two years left

Simon Stiell, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, warned on 10 April 2024 that there were just two years left to draw up an international plan for the climate that would cut greenhouse gas emissions in line with the goal of limiting temperature rises to 1.5°C above preindustrial levels.

“There’s no room now for half measures,” he warned, referring to the global heat that has surpassed records for the past 10 months. “Averting a climate-driven economic catastrophe is core business.”

But Stiell held out a promise of global economic renewal, for the developed and developing world, if countries shift to a low-carbon economy. “Bold new national climate plans will be a jobs jackpot and economic springboard, to boost countries up that global ladder of living standards,” he said. “[They will] increase food security and lessen hunger. Cutting fossil fuel pollution will mean better health and huge savings, for governments and households alike.”

He called for reform at the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and other development banks that would enable the governments that fund them to provide much more climate finance to the developing world. This would involve greater pledges of overseas aid and debt relief for those labouring under the heaviest burdens, but most importantly changes to the banks’ lending practices that would give poor countries greater access to finance. Leaders of developing countries, including Mia Mottley of Barbados and William Ruto of Kenya, have said such reforms could unlock hundreds of billions of dollars of finance. At present, lending practices are not geared towards tackling the climate crisis.

Stiell called for the World Bank and governments to “step up the pace” on climate finance, including by addressing new sources of funds. These could include a frequent flyer levy and taxes on the carbon emissions from shipping.

Stiell also warned of the impacts of the “global cancer of inequality”, which he said was worsening and was impeding efforts to make the deep cuts in emissions, and the investments in adapting to the impacts of extreme weather, that are necessary to avoid catastrophe. “Business as usual will further entrench the gross inequalities between the world’s richest and poorest countries and communities that unchecked climate impacts are making much worse,” he said. “These inequalities are kryptonite [poison] for cooperative global climate action, and every economy, every country and its people pays the price of that.”

Current national plans under the UNFCCC – called nationally determined contributions, or NDCs – to cut greenhouse gas emissions in line with the target of holding temperature rises “pursuing efforts” to limit them to 1.5C, are inadequate to cut emissions to the extent needed. Many scientists believe that the 1.5C limit is already well beyond reach, pointing to the past 10 months of record temperatures on land and at sea. The UN is pinning its hopes on a revision of NDCs, to run beyond 2030, that would require much deeper cuts. At the COP29 UN climate summit in Azerbaijan this November, countries are expected to set a new finance goal to enable the new rounds of NDCs due to be submitted next spring.

SOURCE: edited from https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/apr/10/world-bank-must-tak…