By Alexander Ratz and Sarah Marsh
BERLIN (Reuters) – Germany’s climate envoy said in an interview that global financial institutions need a revamp to better fight climate change, which requires leaders who understand the science, amid a fray over the views of World Bank chief David Malpass.
The comments by Jennifer Morgan, who led Greenpeace International before joining Germany’s Greens-run foreign ministry, come after Malpass last month declined to say he supported the scientific consensus on climate change.
Malpass later apologised and defended the World Bank’s commitment to tackling climate change, but many civil society groups are pushing for his replacement at the helm of the bank before his term expires in April 2024.
“The whole international financial institutions that came to be after the Second World War, the Bretton Woods institutions, now are being discussed in a way that could revamp them for today’s problems,” the U.S.-born Morgan, Germany’s first special envoy for international climate action, told Reuters.
“And we need good leadership for that.”
Financial institutions could also help tackle the sensitive issue of compensation for economic losses and damages due to climate-induced extreme weather events, she said.
Morgan, together with Chile’s environment minister, Maisa Rojas, is in charge of coming up with a plan for how to include “loss and damage” on the formal agenda of the upcoming COP27 climate negotiations in Egypt from Nov. 6-18.
The issue is contentious, as lower-income and climate-vulnerable countries are seeking concrete answers while industrialised nations are wary of creating a fund because of the liabilities they may face.
“Germany, the European Union – we very much support an agenda item (on this),” said Morgan, noting countries still needed to hammer out some details. “But I think no one wants an agenda fight at the beginning of this COP”.
Germany itself was leading a G7 initiative to create a “global shield against climate risks” to help communities in vulnerable countries recover faster from disasters, she said.
This would tailor support to countries and match them with finance, insurance and technical mechanisms.
Germany was also open to negotiating a deal on loss and damages within the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, she said.
Asked about Russia’s potential role at COP27, she said a Russian representative had attended the pre-COP talks in Kinshasa last week, which ran smoothly.
“They’re a party just like any other party,” she said. “We have to show that we can move forward together. So we’ll see what they do at the COP.”
(Reporting by Alexander Ratz and Sarah Marsh; Additional Reporting by Valerie Volcovici and Kate Abnett; Editing by Miranda Murray and Raissa Kasolowsky)
