Climate finance takes centre stage at COP28 climate talks
investing.comBy Simon Jessop, Maha El Dahan and Hadeel Al Sayegh
DUBAI (Reuters) -Money pledges grabbed the spotlight again at COP28 in Dubai on Monday as delegates turned their focus to the yawning gap in the need for climate finance and what's on offer.
The United Arab Emirates, the host of this year's conference, pledged $270 billion in green finance by 2030 through its banks, and several development banks made fresh moves to scale up their funding efforts, including by agreeing to pause debt repayments when disaster strikes.
But leaders of the region's biggest economy and the world's biggest oil producer Saudi Arabia have so far not attended the U.N. summit, in sharp contrast to their participation in last year's COP27 conference in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt.
On Monday, Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, energy minister and the key climate negotiator, for the kingdom, was a no-show at the Saudi Green Initiative. De facto ruler Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman also did not deliver a speech to world leaders as scheduled on Friday.
VAST NEEDS
The amount of cash needed for the energy transition, climate adaptation and disaster relief is overwhelming.
A report released Monday estimated that emerging markets and developing countries will need $2.4 trillion a year in investment to cap emissions and adapt to the challenges posed by climate change.
«The world is not on track to realise the goals of the Paris Agreement. The reason for this failure is a lack of investment, particularly in emerging market and developing countries outside China,» said co-author Nicholas Stern, chair of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment.
«The central challenge is to accelerate and implement the fostering and financing of this
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