Paris (EFE) has created it.”
“The market’s own mechanisms are not going to solve the climate crisis,” said Petro in his speech at the summit for a new global financial pact that brings together government leaders, international institutions and representatives of civil society in Paris to lay the foundations for a new development financing system that combines the fight against poverty and climate change.
The Colombian president spoke directly to the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, with whom he shared a round table, to ensure that the measures proposed by Brussels, such as pollution pricing, are too dependent on private companies.
“Investment to combat the climate crisis amounts to hundreds of billions” and “capital is guided by profitability,” said Petro, who questioned “whether the market can provide a solution to a problem that it has created itself.”
Petro insists on debt exchange
He recognized that “there is no time to wage war on capital” but to admit that “it has its limits” when it comes to solving current problems and that “the necessary resources go beyond profitability.”
That is why he called for a global “Marshall plan” that can be financed in part with a tax on financial transactions, but also with special debt issues for climate investments.
“It would be about changing the debt for climate action,” insisted the Colombian president, who agreed that this would mean a profound change in institutions such as the World Bank (WB) or the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
For Petro, States must “recover their power” “not to decree the end of the markets, but to recognize their limitations in the fight against climate change.”
He insisted that in order to achieve this objective, a dialogue is needed between the North and the South because, in his opinion, “the end of the planet concerns everyone.”
Important figures present at the summit
The same round table, where in addition to Petro and Von der Leyen also had the participation of the presidents of Egypt, Abdelfatah al Sisi; South Africa, Cyril Ramaphosa and the one from Congo, Denis Sassou Nguesso, who called for very concrete measures and no more debates.
“In each COP the same announcements are made,” Sassou Nguesso complained. In Copenhagen 100,000 million (yearly dollars) were promised for poor countries and we have not seen anything. You have to start taking concrete actions. It would be a shame if this summit were to resemble the previous ones. We are at a historic moment, it is time to break and we need important decisions.