Reuters IMPACT continued Tuesday, convening government, business and thought leaders to inspire, drive action and accelerate innovation toward climate emergency.
The second day of Reuters IMPACT featured noteworthy speakers including COP 26 CEO Peter Hill; Bezos Earth Fund CEO Andrew Steer; Finland Finance Minister Annika Saarikko; Meta’s EMEA Vice President Angie Gifford; UN Convention on Biological Diversity Executive Secretary Elizabeth Mrema; British businesswoman, TV personality and ambassador to the World Wildlife Fund Deborah Meaden; Rolls Royce CEO Warren East; the Climate Group CEO Helen Clarkson; Climate Investment Funds CEO Mafalda Duarte; European Investment Bank President Werner Hoyer; and Great Britain SailGP Team and INEOS Britannia CEO Sir Ben Ainslie.
Find news highlights from today’s summit below:
Head of EU’s lending signals joint action plan for COP and giant Ukraine fund
The head of the European Union’s powerful lending arm has urged leaders not to backslide on climate targets amid the energy crisis and signalled a joint action plan from the world’s top development banks at next month’s COP 27 summit and on Ukraine. Werner Hoyer, president of the European Investment Bank (EIB), said the energy market turmoil caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine had undoubtedly been a setback for net zero emissions goals, but that the path forward remained unchanged.
Jeff Bezos fund to push for Africa land restoration around U.N. climate summit
Billionaire Jeff Bezos’s environmental fund is seeking to build a coalition with African and European countries around this year’s U.N. climate summit to add heft to land restoration efforts, its top official told Reuters. As next month’s COP27 in Egypt approaches, the Bezos Earth Fund is championing a cause to begin reversing deforestation and land degradation on 100 million hectares in Africa by 2030, said Andrew Steer, the philanthropic organization’s chief executive. The so-called AFR100 initiative is led by some African Union countries.
COP27 must address challenges of the developing world
Next month’s U.N. climate summit must do more to include the developing world, financial and industry leaders told the Reuters IMPACT conference this week, as global warming reaches a critical juncture for the poorest nations. The gulf between the Global South and the developed world, in terms of climate effects and mitigation, is coming sharply into focus ahead of the COP27 meeting in Egypt. “Africa’s contribution to all the carbon out there, is about 3% … but the ten countries most affected by climate change are in Africa,” Sudanese-British billionaire businessman Mo Ibrahim said at the conference. “Without power, there is no education, no schools, no jobs, no healthcare; you cannot have human life.”
Oil and gas methane emissions could be solved this decade, experts say
Emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, from oil and gas infrastructure could be stamped out within the next 10 years, industry experts said on Tuesday. Speaking at the Reuters IMPACT climate conference in London, they noted that technology to detect leakages from oil and gas had been ramping up in the last five years, making mitigation feasible. “Those technologies when deployed … can fix the methane emissions very quickly,” said Julien Perez, vice-president of strategy and policy at the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative, a consortium of CEOs from a dozen large oil and gas companies.
See all the news from both days of Reuters IMPACT on Reuters.com.
Media contact:
Heather Carpenter
heather.carpenter @ tr.com