The new head of the world’s largest climate finance institution has warned that the US and Europe will be “hit” if they fail to invest in clean energy in developing countries, regardless of their domestic policy efforts.
Mafalda Duarte, Portuguese national, to take over $12 billion U.N.-backed Green Climate Fund Next month, when world leaders gather in Paris this week to discuss climate finance reform, he told the Financial Times about the challenges ahead.
“If we’re not investing in developing countries, forget about climate,” Duarte said. “If India, Africa, Indonesia, China — if they don’t act, then it doesn’t matter what we do in the developed world. . . It’s going to hit America, it’s going to hit Europe, it doesn’t matter. “
Rich countries have been scrambling to meet financing pledges made in previous U.N. climate talks. Of the $100 billion adaptation fund pledged at the UN summit in Copenhagen 14 years ago, only $83.3 billion had been raised by the 2020 target date, according to the OECD.
Rich countries recently pledged to provide funding to poorer countries to help shift their energy systems from coal to renewables through the Partnership for a Just Energy Transition.
But the huge amount of money needed to tackle the climate crisis has led countries including the US and Europe to rely even more on multilateral lenders. Governments have urged the World Bank to expand its remit to address “global public goods” such as pandemic preparedness and climate.
Duarte questioned whether leaders in developed countries were doing enough to create the political conditions for money to be invested abroad.
“People talk about the impact on global public goods, but are we doing enough to get a lot of people to understand what this means? It means you have to invest elsewhere, not just in your own country.
“You look at the news, we’re going to hit 1.5C (global temperature rise) by 2027,” Duarte said. “You need global leaders who have internalized that this exists and acted accordingly.”
In December, the U.S. Congress pledged just $1 billion to help poorer countries tackle climate change, a far cry from President Joe Biden’s promise that Washington would spend more than $11 billion a year by 2024, despite its passage A massive domestic clean energy spending program.
Duarte also called for more female leadership as he prepares to take over the GCF, which has been embroiled in a sexual harassment scandal in 2020.
“The culture of the organization is one of my top priorities,” said Duarte, who took over after managing a $10 billion climate investment fund.
At this month’s United Nations climate conference in Bonn, Germany, female delegates recently accused their male delegates of intimidating or harassing her before speaking.
More than two dozen countries, including Mexico, the US, the UK, Germany, Peru and Canada, wrote to the UN last week calling for action to “ensure a harassment-free environment”.
The letter, seen by the Financial Times, called on organizers to “pay particular attention to the treatment of women negotiators in the[UNFCCC]venues, inside and outside negotiations, ensuring that all involved feel respected and safe on the job. environment”.
Duarte said she wanted to see “more and more” women in climate leadership positions, citing a study that found that increased female empowerment was linked to better climate outcomes.
“We do know that women make different decisions . . . Why do women, in general, invest more in education and health than men when they have disposable income?” Duarte said.
“I’m not saying we don’t have a very generous group of people out there who see (climate change) as an existential threat,” Duarte said. “But I believe that if we saw more women, we might see a more decisive response to existential threats to our children.”
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