Key Points
The ongoing war in Ukraine and the fighting in Gaza following Hamass 7 October terrorist attack must not distract the world from our collective priorities: reducing our carbon dioxide emissions, aiming for carbon neutrality by 2050, preserving biodiversity, and fighting poverty and inequality..
The results are already there: In two years, following the initiative we took in Paris in the spring of 2021, we have released over $100 billion in special drawing rights (SDRs, the International Monetary Funds reserve asset) for vulnerable countries..
In the first half of 2024, France and Bangladesh will sign an agreement to finance climate-change adaptation and loss and damage, with the French development agency contributing 1 billion ($1.1 billion) in investment, and the IMF extending up to $1 billion worth of SDRs in new loans..
The countries with the most important carbon and biodiversity reserves, especially in the three main tropical forest basins, must obtain much greater resources, determined on a country-by-country basis, in exchange for their stewardship of these vital reserves..
We need to create an international carbon and biodiversity exchange that will allow governmental and private actors to organize voluntary carbon credit swaps, based on sufficiently ambitious criteria to avoid greenwashing, and to remunerate local communities..
