COP28: Global warming could cost poor countries trillions

Dubai: A prominent developing-world leader on the issue of climate change said on Monday that global taxes on the financial services, oil and gas, and shipping industries could drum up hundreds of billions of dollars for poorer countries to adapt and cope with global warming.

Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley focused on how poorer countries, with help from richer countries and international finance, could shoulder theastronomical costs to adapt to climate change, reduce its future impact, and pay for losses and damage caused as climate trouble like floods, forest fires and heat waves rip through communities.

The UN climate summit known as COP28, which is being presided over by the head of the United Arab Emirates’ biggest oil company, put its attention on Monday on how developing countries could possibly pay trillions of dollars that experts say they will need to cope with global warming.

“This has probably been the most progress we’ve seen in the last 12 months on finance,” Mottley told reporters about pledges to fund the transition to clean energy, adapt to climate change and respond to extreme weather events.

“But we’re not where we need to be yet,” she said.

World Bank President Ajay Banga laid out five target areas in climate finance.

His bank wants to lower methane emissions from waste management and farming; help Africa with greener energies; support “voluntary” carbon markets such as for forest projects; and allow developing countries hit by natural disasters to pause

debt repayments.