UN urges commitments on climate financing
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E-mail China.org.cn, October 25, 2013
"Private investment is essential to meet the growing demand for energy in the developing world," said Mr. Ban. "We need in particular to win over institutional investors that collectively manage more than 70 trillion dollars of assets."
The bulk of these investments are high-carbon assets, he noted, adding that less than one per cent of pension fund assets are invested in sustainable infrastructure projects.
"These investors have the power – and I believe the responsibility – to do their part in transforming the global economy and setting us on a safer path," the top UN official stressed.
Speaking to journalists after bilateral discussions with Danish Minister for Climate, Energy and Building, Martin Lidegaard, Mr. Ban added that strengthening and expanding the UN partnership network will be the key successfully addressing climate change.
During his visit to Copenhagen, the UN chief has met with leaders of pension funds and insurance companies, which he described as "very positive."
"They were very positively inclined to fully commit themselves and engage themselves in working together with the international community, and the United Nations in particular, in this process," he noted.
Mr. Ban admitted, however, that mobilizing $100 billion a year for climate finance by 2020 and every year thereafter will be a "huge challenge" but "I do not think it is sort of a miracle or something impossible."
"This is why I am asking first public funds, second, private financing," he said.
Mr. Ban has proposed convening a Climate Summit at UN Headquarters in New York next September to bring together Government, business, finance and civil society leaders from around the world to tackle climate change and give equal balance to the three dimensions of sustainable development – economic, social and environmental.
The urgency to tackle climate change has been reenergized amidst the 1,000 days of action to achieve the global anti-poverty targets known as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by the 2015 deadline. World leaders have also agreed on 2015 as the year for establishing a new sustainable development framework and reaching an agreement on climate change.
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