GREEN MEP and economist, Molly Scott Cato, is to warn a conference [1] of the dangers of relying on private financiers to solve the issue of climate finance.
Ahead of the COP21 negotiations, she will tell the conference in Paris, that with around $3,536bn needed to implement climate pledges [2], a deal could flounder on the issue of climate finance. She will warn that in an effort to try and avoid this, the parties involved in the negotiations risk ‘falling into the jaws of global finance’.
Dr Scott Cato, who is also Green Party finance speaker, said:
"The wolves of global finance are circling, scenting our vulnerability, and looking to make a killing. Private money is being rapidly created through the issue of bonds such as the World Bank’s Global Green Bond scheme [3]. Since the return on the bonds is an impressive 5%, this will mean that poorer countries will need to pay money to wealthy Western investors for the life of the bond. This is the impact of privately financed climate solutions.”
Molly Scott Cato will say it is vital that we consider how the money needed to address climate change is created, particularly for the wold's poorer citizens. She will advocate alternative sources of public funding, in particular a process of green quantitative easing (QE) [4]. She said:
“The negotiations in Paris may well turn on the question of whether or not we can afford to save the planet. Our recent history suggests that if the planet were a bank we would have saved it by now. Green QE is a way to prevent private finance hijacking the transition to a green economy we so desperately need.”
Notes
[1] Green COP event will take place at Port Des Champs Elysées, 75008 Paris.
[2] http://www.carbonbrief.org/paris-2015-tracking-requests-for-climate-finance
[3] http://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/climatechange/brief/green-bonds-climate-finance