The head of the International Monetary Fund has called for an end to “business as usual” ahead of the start of the COP28 climate talks and warned such a route was “not viable” if the world wants to manage global warming.
Chief Kristalina Georgieva said that climate-damaging carbon emissions needed to fall between 25% and 50% by 2030 but pledges so far would only lead to a “meagre” 11% cut.
“The most important thing in COP28 is to be clear that the way we are going is not viable and define a level of ambition that is likely to keep a chance for the world to live with temperatures not exceeding 1.5 to 2 degrees Celsius,” she said.
“So that is to my mind the number one priority for this COP, is to recognize that business as usual has to be dropped.” A key theme of the talks will be what more governments can do to overhaul the world’s multilateral financial system to ensure more money is made available to vulnerable countries already feeling the impacts of more extreme weather events.
Georgieva said efforts to-date — the World Bank, for example, could boost lending by $100 billion over a decade — were very promising, because there is finally a determination to make the whole bigger than the sum of the individual parts.
Earlier, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres had called for an end to fossil fuel pollution. He said, “Leaders at COP28 must not let the hopes of people around the world for a sustainable planet melt away.”
The advisory panel to the COP28 has also advised on increasing taxes on polluting activities and cutting fossil fuel subsidies that could generate trillions of dollars to tackle climate change.
Panel member Amar Bhattacharya of the Brookings’ Center for Sustainable Development said, “We see a big potential, particularly from taxing the bad internationally and using that money to generate predictable resources.”
Meanwhile, Save Soil will also be a part of the Summit, wherein India’s Spiritual leader and environmentalist, Sadhguru will advocate for saving the soil as a key player in combating climate change.
(Reuters)