Macron warns battle against climate change not won, urges more funds

PARIS, Dec. 12 (Xinhua) -- "We are losing the battle" against climate change, French President Emmanuel Macron warned on Tuesday during One Planet Summit in Paris.

"We are not going fast enough and that's the drama. We must all move because we will all be accountable," he told the gathering.

On Dec. 12, 2015, a total of 196 parties to the UNFCCC reached the historic Paris Agreement on climate change to cut greenhouse gas emissions and set a global target of keeping the average temperature rise in their countries no higher than 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

The agreement also saw developed countries commit to contribute 100 billion U.S. dollars a year from 2020 to mitigate climate change impacts in developing countries.

Two years after, little was done according to French president who invited companies and private sectors along with scores of world leaders and international organizations to discuss how to raise enough funds to put the accord's commitments on the ground.

After the United States, one of the world's largest main greenhouse producers, withdrew from the Paris Agreement this year, Macron pledged to continue the fight against climate deterioration that has triggered a wave of drought, seas rising and torrential rainfall.

Via a web platform "Make Our Planet Great Again" launched in June, Macron invited scientists, teachers, entrepreneurs, associations, NGOs and students from across the globe to join the fight against global warming. Many responded to his call for act.

Earlier in the day, the World Bank announced it would suspend financing after 2019 the exploration and exploitation of oil and gas to encourage the global efforts to switch to clean economies and curb global warming.

Via its private sector-arm, the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the bank planned earlier this year in partnership with Amundi, Europe's largest asset manager, to invest up to 325 million U.S. dollars in the Green Cornerstone Bond Fund, "largest ever green-bond fund dedicated to emerging markets" to expand and unlock private funding for climate-related project.

"We're here...to raise our collective ambitions for speed and scale ... We need investments in the trillions - not billions - to have any hope of keeping the commitments we made here two years ago," said World Bank president Jim Yong Kim.

"At the World Bank Group, we're working with partners to leverage all of the financial mechanisms at our disposal - concessional finance, green bonds, blended finance, and risk-mitigation instruments - to fund climate-smart projects ... and to set the conditions to get market forces moving in the right direction," he added.

As well, the European Commission unveiled 9 billion euros (10.58 billion U.S. dollars) of investments targeting sustainable cities, sustainable energy and sustainable agriculture for Africa and EU neighborhood countries.

For its part, France, to counter global warming, pledges 1.5 billion euros per year by 2020 to help vulnerable countries to better cope with climate change and reach carbon neutrality.

Amid the 12 non-binding commitments announced in Paris summit, climate actors from 94 countries and 47 companies vowed more acts to fight desertification and preserve water resources via a platform to finance 100 projects mainly in Africa over the next five years.

Participants also agreed on the necessity to accelerate the transition toward a decarbonized economy by 2050 and incite the use of clean transport. (1 euro = 1.17 U.S. dollars) Enditem