Developed nations have to make good on their promise to provide $100 billion a year in financing to help emerging-market countries combat climate change, according to Majid Al Suwaidi, the director general of the COP28 climate summit that will take place in Dubai this year.
The world is a long way off from meeting 2030 climate targets established in the Paris Agreement, and mobilizing resources for developing countries is crucial to meeting them, Al Suwaidi said.
“We need to be investing across the board in every kind of solution that is going to get us back on track,” Al Suwaidi said in an interview on Tuesday. “We need to have this $100 billion delivered this year.”
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Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has been a vocal advocate of having developed nations follow through on their climate financing pledges, which fall short of the trillions of dollars needed to actually prevent global temperatures from rising more than 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit). The majority of future emissions will come from emerging economies that often don’t have the resources to finance climate mitigation, he said.
“This is something that was promised a long time ago and needs to be delivered,” said Al Suwaidi. “We need to pull out all the stops.”
(Corrects to remove reference that Al Suwaidi was in Brazil)
