UN climate summit leader says funding key to success

Paris: The British official who will preside over an upcoming U.N. climate summit said Tuesday that he's losing sleep over how to get long-promised funding for poorer nations to switch to cleaner energy and cope with the worst impacts of climate change.

Alok Sharma, president of the 26th United Nations Change Climate Change Conference, used a speech in Paris to jolt richer nations into action in the last weeks before the Oct. 31-Nov. 12 event in Glasgow, Scotland.

Sharma said that securing the previously promised annual package of climate change funding for poorer nations is vital to the success of the summit.

Without finance, tackling climate change is well-nigh impossible. So developed countries must deliver on the 100 billion a year promised to developing nations. This is a totemic figure. A matter of trust. And trust is a hard-won and fragile commodity in climate negotiations," he said.

Thinking about this does keep me awake at night," he added.

Sharma, who was the U.K.'s secretary of state for business before he stepped down to oversee the COP26 conference, also put pressure on the Group of 20 nations that together account for the bulk of global wealth and trade and around 80% of polluting emissions that contribute to global warming.

Calling for ambitious, pragmatic and balanced global environmental protection targets, Chinese President Xi Jinping on Tuesday announced a USD 233 million fund to support biodiversity protection in developing countries.

Xi was addressing a UN conference- Leaders' Summit of the 15th meeting of Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity- via a video link in Beijing.

We need to practice true multilateralism, and effectively honour and implement international rules, which are not to be exploited or discarded at one's own will, he said.