Strong Paris climate deal necessary to secure low carbon future, says World Bank VP

Rachel Kyte. [Photo/CFP]

UNITED NATIONS - A strongest possible climate deal will allow the world to secure low emissions needed to prevent impacts exacerbating in the future, Rachel Kyte, World Bank's vice-president, said Wednesday.

"From the World Bank Group's perspective, we believe that it is in our clients' interest -- our country clients and our private sector clients -- that we get the strongest possible deal," Kyte, also the Bank's special envoy for climate change, said in an interview with Xinhua.

"What's critically important is that we mobilise the financial and critical support to the most vulnerable, so that they can build their resilience now," Kyte said.

Negotiations for a world pact to curb global warming will start in Paris Sunday in what is expected to the biggest gathering of world leaders on climate in history.

The United Nations and many others hope that the crunch UN summit will see countries finally reach an agreement on how they will work together to limit global warming to two degrees Celsius.

Two degrees Celsius is the generally agreed upper limit of warming above pre-industrial levels needed to prevent the most catastrophic effects of climate change.

On the difficulty facing negotiators at the Paris conference, Kyte underlined the need to formulate an agreement that meets the needs of all nations.

"We recognize that at the same time every country is at a different stage of its economic journey," she said. "Many countries find themselves experiencing severe impact of climate change even though they had little or nothing to do with the causes of climate change historically."

"The difficulty that negotiators are experiencing in formulating an agreement which meets the needs of all nations is simply a reflection of the fact that we are now negotiating the way in which the global economy can move forward with less carbon intensity and more resilience," she added.

So the difficulty is to negotiate a package that moves mankind forward, meets the needs of the most vulnerable and is ambitious enough that "it sends a clear signal to all economic actors that we do want to pursue low carbon growth and we want to do so quickly," she said.

"This is everybody's business," Kyte stressed. "This is no longer a pollution control treaty being negotiated only within the environment sphere. This is a global, economic and political agreement. That stretches the capacity of the negotiating process."

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