Prime Minister, the Hon. Philip Davis is in New York this week attending the 77th session of the United Nations General Assembly. Mr. Davis took part in a panel on climate change financing where he said that climate change is a crisis that must be addressed. Davis said, “first of all, all pledgers, all what I call committers, who promise that they’re going to make available the monies that they said. For example, in 2015, it was supposed to be $100 billion each year, none of it has been realized to date. We who are most vulnerable are pledge fatigued. We need action and we need to find ways and means to have the industrialized world, countries who have been burning fossil fuels for centuries that have this cloud of carbon in the air. Time for us to let them pay the bill.”
The President of the World Bank, Davis Malpass, was also a part of the panel and took exception to criticism being levied on the bank. He said, “they may not know what the world bank is doing, some of them are simply not involved in the efforts that are going on to actually have an impact. People fly to meetings, make pledges and then their gone. And so I really think it might be useful if I just go through what the World Bank is doing. This has been a huge effort for the bank under my leadership that climate financing from the World Bank has grown rapidly.”
The International Monetary Fund’s Managing Director also spoke to what her organization is doing in regards to climate change. Kristalina Georgieva said, “how much money do we have in climate action, you gave the number, 350 billion, how much more we need on an annual basis, five to ten times more. The money, the difference between what is needed and what we are getting is not going to be fixed by our forty billion, unless this forty billion is directed to remove barriers for private investment in emerging markets and developing economies on a scale. So I don’t want you to hold us accountable for how much people we spent, you have to hold us accountable what is the leverage impact of this money.”
The Prime Minister is expected to address the general assembly later this week and return to the capital on Sunday.
