Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has urged developed nations to increase their climate change financing commitments.
"I appeal to the advanced economies that commitment to financing climate change, transferring technologies, which are important for achieving climate-related commitments and goals, will have to be ramped up, speeded up and scaled up,” she said while addressing International Conference on Disaster Resilient Infrastructure (ICDRI).
She said India has announced a National Infrastructure Pipeline (NIP) consisting of nearly 7,000 projects, and the government has adopted the route of reviving the economy through building infrastructure. She informed that the government is also looking at various routes for funding infrastructure, including infrastructure debt fund or national bank for funding infrastructure, which would be taken up by Parliament soon.
The finance minister said natural disasters remind everyone of the risks that infrastructure faces and countries’ vulnerabilities due to climate change. "Climate finance requirements are at the core of everything that we do in building a resilient infrastructure," Sitharaman said.
Honour UNFCCC commitments
She noted that multilateral institutions have played a critical role in climate change financing. Under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the developed countries must provide funds to developing nations. It is required of developed countries to understand that the commitment made under the UNFCCC will have to be honoured, she reminded.
"The quantitative commitment of USD 100 billion a year is something that advanced economies will have to recognise and that amount is itself is a meagre amount and has to be ramped up," Sitharaman said, adding that even that commitment is not being fulfilled.