BARCELONA - A new patchwork of pledges from the world’s biggest development lenders, set to release hundreds of billions of dollars for poorer nations, has raised hopes the financial floodgates are finally starting to open in tackling climate change and poverty.
“It’s about all of us, big and small. It’s about us in our diversity,” he told journalists. “It’s about crafting a ‘win-win’ outcome.” The outcomes from the summit included a range of deals for individual nations - notably a debt restructure package for Zambia and a US$2.7 billion “just energy transition partnership” for Senegal - and changes to the way the World Bank and the IMF operate, which will have global impacts.
Many of the financial reform measures had been proposed by Barbados, whose leader Mia Mottley said governments were leaving Paris with “a commitment to get down into the granular details to make sure that what we agree here can be executed”. But Ms Rachel Cleetus, lead economist and policy director for the climate and energy programme at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said far more was needed beyond fulfilling existing promises.