Explore Business Standard
Don’t miss the latest developments in business and finance.
The world's top development banks provided more than $80 billion last year to help countries tackle climate change, passing a goal they set in 2019, according to a report published Friday. The European Investment Bank, or EIB, said it and seven other financial institutions committed almost $50.7 billion to low- and middle-income countries, and over $31 billion to rich nations in 2021. Multilateral development banks such as the EIB and the World Bank had pledged three years ago to collectively achieve those targets by 2025. Still, the banks have faced calls to step up their lending for climate projects even more, particularly to struggling economies which are unable to finance projects in other ways. United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said this week that development banks' current business models were painfully averse to risk. This causes projects such as renewable energy installation to be many times more expensive in poor countries than in rich nations, he said.
The chair of an influential negotiating bloc in the upcoming United Nations climate summit in Egypt has called for compensation for poorer countries suffering from climate change to be high up on the agenda. Madeleine Diouf Sarr, who chairs the Least Developed Countries group, told The Associated Press that the November conference known as COP27 should capture the voice and needs of the most climate-vulnerable nations and deliver climate justice. Sarr said the group would like to see an agreement to establish a dedicated financial facility that pays nations that are already facing the effects of climate change at the summit. The LDC group, comprised of 46 nations that make up just a small fraction of global emissions, negotiates as a bloc at the UN summit to champion the interests of developing countries. Issues such as who pays for poorer nations to transition to cleaner energy, making sure no communities get left behind in an energy transition and boosting how well vulnerable ..
Development of any country cannot be complete unless poor people are freed from inequality and brought into the mainstream, Union Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar has said, asserting that the Modi government has been working on this objective in a planned manner. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been striving hard to increase the credibility of the country globally, he said. Tomar was addressing the 8th General Meeting of MahaFPC, a state-level farmer producer company, in Pune on Thursday as its chief guest. "The development journey of any nation cannot be complete unless the poor are free from inequality. Similar was the situation in the country as almost half of the population did not have bank accounts, crores of families did not have toilets, electricity, gas cylinders in their kitchen or houses to live in. PM Modi took the initiative to remove these inequalities," a press release quoted Tomar as saying. Now, houses for the poor are being built under the Pradhan Mantri