3rd November 2021
The topic for COP26 today is finance.
In order to tackle climate change finance is needed, both state and private finance. This comes in the form of investment needed to facilitate the transfer from carbon-based to green technologies, and to train those who will work in these new industries; to transfer from animal based agriculture to plant based agriculture, and from a meat and diary based food industry to a plant based food industry; the need to invest in restoring, enlarging and maintaining carbon sequestering land and seascapes; the need to adapt existing and build new infrastructure to cope with the changes in climate that are already happening such as flooding and heat waves, including paying for those individuals and groups who cannot afford to pay for these adaptions themselves; to develop the new systems and infrastructure needed to cope with the future changes in the climate which have already been locked into world and which may increase if global temperatures rise significantly above the current 1C increase.
Poorer countries and small island states are in particular need of support from affluent countries like ours. The intention – although not yet the fact – is that developed nations will be supplying $1 billion to finance support for these more vulnerable nations.
The Green Tau 