The Interview – John Kerry: ‘There are trillions of dollars waiting to be invested’ in climate transition

Issued on: 23/06/2023 – 21:27

French President Emmanuel Macron hosted world leaders at a summit in Paris to thrash out funding for the climate transition and post-Covid debt burdens of poor countries, hoping to secure billions of dollars in investment from the private sector.

“There are trillions of dollars waiting to be invested,” Kerry, a former US secretary of state, told FRANCE 24. “That’s what President Macron was addressing in this summit: how do we take those trillions of dollars and excite them to get into the market now in developing economies?”

The former top diplomat said “a lot of good suggestions were put on the table” during the two-day summit, but that challenges remained.

“There are currency challenges, political challenges, so everybody has to step up and begin to take the risk factor out of these investments,” he said.

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Touching on the debt trap holding back the world’s poorer countries, Kerry pointed to growing consensus that global financial institutions including the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund needed “to be fine-tuned” in order to tackle the climate emergency.

The US envoy also stressed the need for Washington and Beijing to cooperate on the climate transition, noting that “climate is one issue where both President Xi Jinping and President Joe Biden have said we should not be the prisoners of other issues”.

He added: “China and the United states together equal about 40% of all the emissions; if we can’t cooperate together, it’s really going to be hard to reach the goal.”

Click on the player above to watch the full interview.