Investors pledge green cash at Paris climate summit

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Where's the cash was the question on the lips of many participants at a climate conference in Paris hosted by French president Emmanuel Macron.

Major investors sought to provide the answer by announcing billions of dollars of intended divestments from coal, oil and natural gas at the finance-themed summit on Tuesday.

The conference was held on the second anniversary of the Paris Agreement to fight global warming that was signed by 195 nations.

According to the International Energy Agency, green energy investments of about 3.5 trillion US dollars per year will be needed for the world to stay under the accord's two-degree limit, an amount double current spending.

Developed nations pledged two years ago to provide 100 billion US dollars from 2020 but there are fears that countries are not getting even close to that figure for the first year.

Host France, as well as the UN and the World Bank, told the conference that efforts to shift the global economy into a green energy future were too little and too slow.

"We are losing the battle against climate change," Macron told delegates. "We are not moving fast enough."

Former California governor and actor Arnold Schwarzenegger attended the climate summit in Paris. /Photo via AFP

World Bank president Jim Yong Kim announced to loud applause Tuesday that the lender would "no longer finance upstream oil and gas after 2019" in a move hailed by Greenpeace as a "damning vote of no confidence to the future of the fossil fuel industry."

French insurer Axa, meanwhile, said it would speed up its divestments from the carbon sector, pulling 2.5 billion euros (2.9 billion US dollars) from companies which derive more than 30 percent of their revenues from coal.

And a group of more than 200 global investors launched a campaign to pressure the world's largest corporate carbon emitters – including BP, Airbus, Volkswagen and Glencore – to go greener.

The Paris Agreement, which took more than two decades to negotiate, seeks to limit average global warming to under two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) over pre-Industrial Revolution levels.

On current emissions trends, the world is on course for warming of three degrees Celsius, experts warn, with life- and asset-threatening superstorms, sea-level rise, floods and droughts the result.

A series of initiatives were unveiled at the "One Planet Summit" held in Paris. /Photo via AFP

US President Donald Trump, who has rejected the Paris deal and vowed to restore jobs in the fossil-fuel industry, came under fire from all quarters on Tuesday.

His rejection of the Paris pact was "politically short-sighted and misguided, economically irresponsible, and scientifically wrong," said former UN chief Ban Ki-moon.

But American businesses, regions and local government leaders have pushed on with climate efforts regardless of the federal government.

"It doesn't matter that Donald Trump backed out of the Paris Agreement," said former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, the face of the R20 network of regional climate actors.

"We at the subnational level, we're going to pick up the slack."

About 200 protesters gathered in the Paris streets demanding that France pays "not a single euro more for fossil energy." /Photo via AFP

Still, many remain concerned about climate financing for developing countries, of which the US – the world's biggest historical greenhouse gas polluter – has traditionally been a major contributor.

Trump has vowed to slash climate finance and withhold two billion US dollars pledged to the Green Climate Fund.

Developing nations need the money to ease the costly shift away from fossil fuels and to shore up defenses against weather disasters induced by climate change.

Rich nations, who have polluted more for longer, pledged in 2009 to muster 100 billion US dollars per year in climate finance from 2020.

On 2015 trends, total public financing would reach about 67 billion US dollars by that date, according to a report of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

AFP Photo

Climate activists welcomed the outcome of Tuesday's summit, though many said they had hoped for more funding announcements and a clear commitment from governments to stop financing fossil fuels.

The meeting showed that "countries, states, cities, businesses and civil society are firmly committed to their Paris commitments and are coming good on their promises, with or without the US," said Mohamed Adow of Christian Aid, which represents the interests of developing nations at the talks.

Macron called for a yearly gathering to take stock of progress.

"We started today to make ground on the battlefield," he said. "I hope that in the coming weeks and months we can accelerate."

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Source(s): AFP