LONDON : The United Nations called on Wednesday for the world's biggest economies to ensure net zero commitments made by financial institutions were robust, backed by science and ended financing for new fossil fuel projects.
There are concerns some of the current pledges are too weak after a landmark report from a U.N. climate panel in August that issued a"code red for humanity", urging faster action from countries to curtail emissions. Against that backdrop, the UNEP FI said financial institutions needed to align with a science-based scenario or scenarios and be transparent about which ones were used.
Once the scenario was set, firms needed to begin aligning lending as soon as possible to have any hope of hitting the global target of capping global warming at no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius.