Six major sovereign wealth funds commit to Paris for climate

Paris – Six sovereign funds together weighing more than 3,000 billion dollars (Norway, New Zealand, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates), gathered Friday in Paris, have decided to engage for the fight against climate change, announced Emmanuel Macron.
  

In a charter issued Friday evening, these heavyweights in global finance, fueled mainly by oil and gas revenues in their country, pledge to encourage companies in which they invest to integrate the risk of climate change and present public data on their low carbon strategy.

They also decided " to allocate a portion of the allocation of their funds to green investments ," said the head of state, without quoting commitment quantified, at a press conference with Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg and Saudi fund manager Yasir Al Rumayyan.

Their joint commitment is part of the " One Planet Summit " of December 12, which aimed to mobilize the private sector for the climate, especially the financial sector. Emmanuel Macron took the initiative to organize this summit after the withdrawal of the United States from the Paris agreement on the climate.

" If finance remains focused on short-term speculation, with too much concentration of profits, it will die, and if the economy is still based on fossil fuels, we will die. Let's move the economy to the right direction, that's why finance was invented, here we rebuild finance, because we are rebuilding trust and that common goal "said Emmanuel Macron.

" These investments make commercial sense for the funds, which was not the case ten or twenty years ago.For example, Saudi Arabia will invest to create 200 GW of solar energy. It's huge, if it makes any commercial sense, it will be sustainable and it will work, while public policies that make no sense commercially do not work "said Al Rumayyan.

The managers of the six sovereign wealth funds were present at the Elysee Palace: Yngve Slyngstad, head of the Norwegian fund ($ 1,000 billion), Khalil Foulathi, manager of the Abu Dhabi fund (about 828 billion), Farouk Bastak for the of Kuwait (524 billion), Yasir Al Rumayyan for the Saudi fund (494 billion), Sheikh Abdulla bin Mohammed bin Saud Al-Thani for that of Qatar (320 billion) and Matt Whineray for the New Zealand fund (20 billion) . For now, no Chinese fund has joined this initiative.

The six funds note together that " the transition to a low carbon economy creates new investment opportunities ," says the charter.

Sovereign wealth funds want to define the framework of common methods before the end of the year for " helping investors to integrate climate risk and thus influence the path of the global economy towards sustainable growth, avoiding catastrophic risks to the planet ".

The work of the sovereign wealth funds should join those of the " task force " on the climate reports of the big companies of the G20, chaired by Michael Bloomberg. By the end of 2016, it had already proposed harmonizing corporate climate reporting.

This charter of good conduct, which aims to create a ripple effect in global finance, is open to major investors. " I will organize the next edition of One Planet Summit in New York on September 26 ," concluded Mr. Macron.