LONDON Reuters - The United Nations development banks need to up their ambition in terms of financial support for climate projects, multilateral global climate envoy Mark Carney said on Tuesday.
In a podcast with Reuters BreakingViews Editor Rob Cox, Carney said groups such as the World Bank and other development finance institutions should focus on backing investments that can be scaled up to $100 billion a year.
Is there something in climate finance that is not going to scale to 100 billion a year in the medium term, it's interesting, it's niche: that's how big the numbers are said Carney.
I think all MDBs need to design programs that are scalable, which can reach those levels. Carney: At the next round of global climate talks in November at Glasgow, Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero GFANZ, a group of financial institutions working to reduce emissions, would unveil a plan to help.
We will make explicit proposals for that and hopefully we will get traction with it. On Monday, GFANZ issued a separate call to action for governments to enact a suite of policy changes the group said would help accelerate the transition to low-carbon economy.
The comments follow criticism from others that development finance institutions have not done enough to help encourage more private sector capital to be deployed in the fight against climate change, especially in poorer countries.
Earlier in the year, BlackRock Chief Executive Larry Fink called for the World Bank and International Monetary Fund to be reformed so that they would provide more first-loss capital to help bring down the cost of financing for private investors.
In an interview with the Reuters Impact conference, however, International Finance Corporation Managing Director Makhtar Diop said MDBs were pushing as hard as they can and were fit for purpose.