‘Developing countries need lots of money to fight climate change’

Developing countries need “lots of money”

Developing countries need “lots of money” to fight climate change, which is being manifested in devastating floods and rising desertification, especially in African nations, a senior official of the Nigerian government said on Thursday.

The world needs USD four trillion every year to fight climate change, the adviser to Nigeria’s Finance Ministry, Mahmoud Isa-Dutse told PTI on the sidelines of the ongoing G20 meeting here.

“To fight climate change problems, one needs lots of money. If we cannot generate funds, then there is no point talking about sustainability and resisting climate change,” he said.

The world needs more finances to handle growing incidents of natural disasters, Dutse, who is also the executive director of Saudi Arabia-based Islamic Development Bank, said.

“We need to cut down on fossil fuels and have green technologies. There are rising cases of floods and desertification across the world. In Nigeria, around 600 people died recently in a devastating flood,” he said.

The world needs alternative sources of energy like solar and wind power solutions for all verticals to fight climate change, the Nigerian official said.

“The developing countries in particular need lots of money. I stressed on that in my presentation. I highlighted the problems faced by Africa due to the climate change – we need to act fast,” Dutse said.

The maiden G20 deliberations in Assam began on Thursday with Guwahati hosting the ‘1st Sustainable Finance Working Group Meeting’.

On the first day there were three sessions — mechanisms for mobilisation of financial resources for climate finance, enabling finance for the SDGs and short induction by the secretariat on monitoring and assessing roadmap progress.

Guwahati, Feb. 2 (PTI)