Finance takes the center-stage at world leaders’ COP26 summit

Finance takes the center-stage at world leaders’ COP26 summit

GLASGOW: Focus at the COP26 summit turned yesterday to how the world will pay for its ambitions to quit fossil fuels and help vulnerable nations survive climate change, as campaigners urged caution over promises of billions from financiers and governments. Negotiators are tasked with using the remaining days of the Glasgow meeting to try to keep the Paris Agreement goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius within reach, after a world leaders’ summit yielded a landmark deal slashing methane emissions. But a simmering diplomatic spat between the United States, China and Russia over their climate action ambitions showed the fragile nature of talks aimed at averting disastrous global heating.

With funding crucial for turning climate pledges into reality, hundreds of financial groups representing trillions in private capital made net-zero pledges yesterday, while British Chancellor Rishi Sunak said that COP26 would deliver on a decade-old promise to help poorer countries cope with climate change.

“We know that you’ve been devastated by the double tragedies of COVID and climate change,” he told the conference. He said richer nations would finally provide $100 billion annually to help poorer nations green their energy grids and respond to increasingly extreme drought and flooding. Delays in the