Boris Johnson announces £3billion fund for developing countries to go green
"No country should be left behind in the race to save our planet"
By Tom Skinner
Boris Johnson has announced that the UK will give £3billion to developing countries to fund green technology.
The Prime Minister announced his plans for the Clean Green Initiative at COP26, the landmark climate change conference that is currently taking place in Glasgow.
‘I want to see the UK’s Green Industrial Revolution go global,” Johnson said. “The pace of change on clean technology and infrastructure is incredible, but no country should be left behind in the race to save our planet.”
He continued: “The climate has often been a silent victim of economic growth and progress – but the opposite should now be true. Through the Clean Green Initiative, we can help to build back better and greener from the pandemic and put the world on the path to a more sustainable future.”
The funding is also said to include £200million for a new Climate Innovation Facility which will support the scale-up of technologies to help developing communities deal with the impacts of global warming.
Schemes will also include electric vehicle manufacturing in India, green bonds in Vietnam and solar power in Burkina Faso, Pakistan, Nepal and Chad.
Yesterday (October 31), Boris Johnson said during COP26’s opening ceremony that the world was at “one minute to midnight” in its race to prevent critical global heating. “We need to act now,” he added.
Johnson joins the likes of US President Joe Biden, First Minister of Scotland Nicola Sturgeon, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in appearing at COP26.
Elsewhere at the summit, Sir David Attenborough urged leaders to be “motivated by hope rather than fear” in their efforts to avoid irreversible climate change.
“Perhaps the fact that the people most affected by climate change are no longer some imagined future generation but young people alive today, perhaps that will give us the impetus we need to rewrite our story,” he said.
Boris Johnson also acknowledged that younger and future generations will be most affected by climate change, saying: “They will know that Glasgow was the historic turning point when history failed to turn.
“They will judge us with bitterness and with a resentment that eclipses any of the climate activists of today, and they will be right. COP26 will not, cannot, be the end of the story on climate change.”
Meanwhile, Billie Eilish and ‘The Office’ star Rainn Wilson are among the figures from the entertainment industry to have called for urgent action against climate change. They both contributed video messages for the University of Exeter’s Green Futures campaign.
COP26 is a 12-day event running from October 31 until November 12.