The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has said that between $84 trillion to about $168 trillion will be needed over the next 28 years to address climate change-related issues and its attendant vulnerability shocks across the globe.
In an article yesterday, IMF Managing Director, Kristalina Georgieva and Tobias Adrian, Head of the IMF Capital Markets Departments, said that governments would be required to play a more catalytic role in propelling private sector funding to deal with climate change.
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In the article titled; ‘Public Sector must play a major role in catalysing Private Climate Finance,’ both Georgieva and Adrian argued that climate change remains one of the “most critical macroeconomic and financial policy challenges that IMF members face in coming decades.
They explained that the recent spikes in the cost of fuel and food and the resulting risks of social unrest, underline the importance of investing in green energy and boosting resilience to shocks.
“It will require massive global investments to address the climate challenge and vulnerabilities to shocks,” the duo argued in the article, adding that estimates ranging “from $3 trillion to $6 trillion per year until 2050,” will be required to fix the attendant challenges.
The IMF chiefs- In underscoring the magnitude and urgency of the climate change problem- said that the current level at about $630 billion devoted to climate change is “just a fraction of what’s really needed.
“That’s why we need a major shift to harness public and, especially, private financing,” they said. “With $210 trillion in financial assets across firms or roughly twice the gross domestic product of the entire world, the challenge for policymakers and investors is how to direct a big share of these holdings to climate mitigation and adaptation projects,”.
Story was adapted from The Nation.
