Dubai World Economic Forum’s direction, COP28 punts innovative finance

Heads of state, ministers, and business leaders reflected during this year’s World Economic Forum at the 28th Conference of the Parties (COP28) and spoke about innovative finance, philanthropy, and civil society on complex ideas for accelerated climate action.

World leaders reflected on complex areas of industry decarbonization, net zero, energy transition, and food and energy transition.

Global emissions continue to rise at 1.5% a year when they should be dropping by 7%. This affects the warming temperatures and ecosystem degradation and has a devastating effect on overall life.

Addressing the critical challenge, there was a focus to measure progress on climate action to identify gaps and responses to reinvigorate immediate international action.

There was a consensus from the forum to mobilize global leaders and the international community to step up on climate action.

This year, the forum looked into advance dialogues which looked into decarbonization, energy transition, climate financing and biodiversity.

As part of the effort to drive accelerated climate action, the Forum and its partners launched two new food initiatives and advanced participation over 12 high-impact partnerships to serve as ongoing platforms for continued collaboration to fight climate action worldwide.

Immediate action is needed to bend the emissions curve and scale the climate technologies that will be essential to net zero – 50% of the emissions reductions needed for net zero must come from technologies not yet available at scale.

A massive buildout of new energy infrastructure, in particular clean power, is needed to meet the goals of the energy transition with total investment estimated at $4.5 trillion by 2030.

John Kerry, Special Presidential Envoy for Climate, United States, said: “When we founded the First Movers Coalition at COP26, it was born of the premise that this crisis is too severe for any one government to be able to solve it. So, the World Economic Forum joined with the EU and US to find businesspeople who are prepared to buy green solutions now to send a message to the marketplace.”

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