A global climate summit wrapped up on Friday with leaders agreeing that the international financial system was woefully inadequate in an era of global warming, after taking a number of small steps to helping debt-burdened developing nations.
While host country France pitched the conference as a consensus-building exercise, leaders were under pressure to produce clear outcomes from the two-day meeting as economies stagger under growing debt after successive crises over the past few years.
The summit comes amid warnings that the world’s ability to curb global warming is reliant on a massive increase in clean energy investment in developing countries.
Photo: EPA-EFE
French President Emmanuel Macron hailed a “complete consensus” to reform global financial institutions and make them “more efficient, fairer and better suited to the world of today.”
About 40 national leaders gathered in Paris, most from developing countries whose economies have been buffeted by crises in recent years, including COVID-19, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, soaring inflation and extreme weather events.
The conference heard time and again that the nearly 80-year-old financial system — underpinned by the World Bank and the IMF — was no longer fit-for-purpose in facing 21st century challenges.
“With this mechanism, the rich are always rich and the poor are always poor,” Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said.
While there was agreement on the broad outlines of the problem, there was less progress on steering the global financial juggernaut in a new direction, although there were several incremental initiatives and advancements on existing promises.
World Bank President Ajay Banga on Thursday said the lender would introduce a “pause” mechanism on debt repayments for countries hit by a crisis so they could “focus on what matters.”
One key announcement came from IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva, who said a pledge to shift US$100 billion of liquidity-boosting “special drawing rights” into a climate and poverty fund had been met.
Overall, the progress made was “not sufficient,” said Friederike Roder, vice president of global advocacy at Global Citizen, adding that the IMF target included a US pledge of US$21 billion that is stuck at the US Congress.
However, she said the meeting had managed to “totally change the conversation” on tough issues that have up to now been mostly kicked into the long grass.
In his National Day Rally speech on Sunday, Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財) quoted the Taiwanese song One Small Umbrella (一支小雨傘) to describe his nation’s situation. Wong’s use of such a song shows Singapore’s familiarity with Taiwan’s culture and is a perfect reflection of exchanges between the two nations, Representative to Singapore Tung Chen-yuan (童振源) said yesterday in a post on Facebook. Wong quoted the song, saying: “As the rain gets heavier, I will take care of you, and you,” in Mandarin, using it as a metaphor for Singaporeans coming together to face challenges. Other Singaporean politicians have also used Taiwanese songs
NORTHERN STRIKE: Taiwanese military personnel have been training ‘in strategic and tactical battle operations’ in Michigan, a former US diplomat said More than 500 Taiwanese troops participated in this year’s Northern Strike military exercise held at Lake Michigan by the US, a Pentagon-run news outlet reported yesterday. The Michigan National Guard-sponsored drill involved 7,500 military personnel from 36 nations and territories around the world, the Stars and Stripes said. This year’s edition of Northern Strike, which concluded on Sunday, simulated a war in the Indo-Pacific region in a departure from its traditional European focus, it said. The change indicated a greater shift in the US armed forces’ attention to a potential conflict in Asia, it added. Citing a briefing by a Michigan National Guard senior
CHIPMAKING INVESTMENT: J.W. Kuo told legislators that Department of Investment Review approval would be needed were Washington to seek a TSMC board seat Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) yesterday said he received information about a possible US government investment in Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) and an assessment of the possible effect on the firm requires further discussion. If the US were to invest in TSMC, the plan would need to be reviewed by the Department of Investment Review, Kuo told reporters ahead of a hearing of the legislature’s Economics Committee. Kuo’s remarks came after US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick on Tuesday said that the US government is looking into the federal government taking equity stakes in computer chip manufacturers that
CLAMPING DOWN: At the preliminary stage on Jan. 1 next year, only core personnel of the military, the civil service and public schools would be subject to inspections Regular checks are to be conducted from next year to clamp down on military personnel, civil servants and public-school teachers with Chinese citizenship or Chinese household registration, the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said yesterday. Article 9-1 of the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例) stipulates that Taiwanese who obtain Chinese household registration or a Chinese passport would be deprived of their Taiwanese citizenship and lose their right to work in the military, public service or public schools, it said. To identify and prevent the illegal employment of holders of Chinese ID cards or
RSS