The initiative, named for the Barbados capital, would overhaul the way development lending works to aid developing nations struggling under rising debt from climate damage. Persaud was one of the architects of the Bridgetown Initiative, first put forward by Mottley at last year’s United Nations climate summit in Egypt and now expected to be a cornerstone of the Paris summit. What we need to do is finance the transition so it can be scaled up and done faster than it would otherwise get done.” “We could say that, but that isn’t the solution for the planet. “We can’t in the developing world say, look, you got rich by polluting, we’re going to wait till we get rich and then we’re going to start doing what you’re doing now,” said Avinash Persaud, special envoy to Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley on climate finance. ![]() South Africa’s rand will depreciate against the dollar, “so that is going to become an increasingly snowballing financial burden,” Lawrence said.Īs world leaders open a two-day global finance summit Thursday in Paris, a central question will be: How can they get the developing world the finances they need to move away from fossil fuels while also growing their economies? Not only is most of the money in loans, but the loans are dollar-denominated. And that risks hobbling the global effort to cut emissions and limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels to stave off the worst effects of climate change.įor South Africa, which needs an estimated $38 billion over the next five years to meet its climate goals, the structure of the Komati funding should be concerning, said Andrew Lawrence, an analyst and senior researcher at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. ![]() The problem, energy experts say, is that almost all that money is in the form of loans that can be difficult for developing nations to repay. It’s supported by $497 million, most of it from the World Bank. MIDDELBURG, South Africa (AP) - Plumes of heat-trapping pollutants last billowed from the giant stacks of Komati Power Station in October, when the coal-fired plant that fed South Africa’s hungry electrical grid for more than half a century was shut down to make way for a solar, wind and battery storage plant.Ĭonverting Komati to be part of the clean energy revolution is seen as an important test case for coal-reliant South Africa, the world’s 16th-largest emitter of greenhouse gases, and developing nations elsewhere.
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