2024-01-05T08:30:18+00:00
A-
A
A+
/ World Bank President Ajay Banga confirmed that combating climate change in the world cannot succeed without the participation of the private sector in it, especially since it requires thousands of billions of dollars.
According to the “CNBC Arabia” economic network, to convince companies to support the World Bank in this field, the Washington-based institution must continue its reforms and move faster in implementing its projects, according to Banga, who confirms his awareness of the need for the World Bank to be “faster.” And focus on achieving results.”
The Indian-American financial official, a former corporate head, pointed out that “governments and multilateral banks do not have enough money” to finance the fight against climate warming alone, stressing “the need for private sector participation,” in an interview with Agence France-Presse.
A G20 report published last June stressed the need to triple the World Bank’s capital, which is “an excellent idea,” according to Ajay Banga, but “it will not be enough to reach the thousands of billions” necessary “just to finance the energy transition.” .
Since assuming the presidency of the World Bank last June, Ajay Banga has been exerting pressure to make the institution “more efficient and better financed” to enable it to respond to its updated mission: “to eradicate poverty on a livable planet.”
In order to achieve this, “the Bank must change and evolve, a point that was clearly emphasized even before my arrival,” Banga said, and it is an essential development “to create the necessary credibility, attract financiers and provide funds” for the projects implemented by the World Bank.
In particular, the Foundation must shorten the time required to implement its projects, which is one of the main goals put forward by Ajay Banga, who hopes to reduce by 30% the period between initial discussions and the first expenditures, which is currently estimated at 27 months.
More broadly, the reforms currently underway are expected to make the day-to-day functioning of the entire organization more efficient, while allowing it to continue to “do its good job”. “Remember, we provided $120 billion in financing last year, and we cannot reduce this amount,” Banga says.
So Ajay Banga describes himself as a “plumber” who wants to make sure the bank “runs like a well-oiled machine,” so that “my successor, who will have other problems, can focus on them, not the plumbing.”
But it is also necessary to show the poorest countries that combating climate warming does not take precedence over reducing poverty, which is the Bank’s core mission, Banga stresses.
He stresses that “the countries of the South realize that we cannot combat poverty without combating climate change, but the difference lies in what we mean by “climate change.”
“For developed countries, this means limiting climate change, and that goes through greenhouse gas emissions, while the developing world is thinking about adaptation, because they see the impact of rising temperatures in terms of irrigation, rainfall, land degradation, and loss of biodiversity,” he adds.
In order to respond to this, the World Bank announced that 45% of its financing will go to projects to “mitigate or adapt” to climate change, “half of it to mitigate it, and the other half to adapt to it.”
“This is important for the beneficiary countries because they see that half of the 45% goes to the topics that interest them, and the remaining 55% is still available,” Banga says. “For donor countries, knowing that half of the 45% goes to reduction projects is important.”
He adds, “We need to reach these concessions, to show donors and beneficiaries that the bank is trying to move in the right direction.”
However, we must also reassure “the countries of the South, which are still waiting for the money that was promised at the Paris conference,” namely $100 billion, to finance their climate transition but that never arrived.
More recently, massive aid to Ukraine has drawn criticism in Africa, where it has been seen as a sign that the institution is prioritizing issues that Western countries consider important.
Ajay Banga confirms that there is a “misunderstanding” in the matter, recalling that “the World Bank puts much more money in sub-Saharan Africa than it allocates to Ukraine,” and that the vast majority of the money in question comes directly from donor countries, through the World Bank.
But there is now a “desire” among the Nordic countries “to provide the necessary financing to the poorest countries, and the message has reached the developed countries,” Banga said.