Delivery on the Ground: Country Action for a Livable Planet

[Lerato Mbele]
Hello, and the warmest welcome to the 2023 Annual Meetings of the World Bank Group and the IMF. My name is Lerato Mbele, and we are live in Marrakesh, Morocco. But before we start, please may I take this opportunity to acknowledge the devastating earthquake that took place in Morocco last month. It's a difficult time for the country and we are here as the global community to stand by Morocco and its people. 

[audience applauds] 

[Lerato Mbele]
Over the next 45 minutes, we'll be discussing the policies, the investments needed to tackle the climate crisis and also to help to build a livable planet for all. Please, you're welcome to share your thoughts on this topic at any time using the hashtag WBMeetings. Please, send us your questions either online at worldbank.org or in person using the QR codes displayed in front of you. Today, we will speak with leaders who are responding to this issue, each with their own unique perspectives. They represent international finance institutions, government, and the private sector. Without further ado, let's dive right into the conversation. Please, welcome Mr. Mark Carney, the Co-Chair of the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero. We also have Her Excellency Leila Benali, the Minister of Energy, Transition and Sustainable Development for the Kingdom of Morocco. We also have Mr. Ajay Banga, the president of the World Bank, and Ms. Kristalina Georgieva, the Managing Director for the International Monetary Fund. 

[audience applauds] 

[Lerato Mbele]
Thank you all very much for being with us, our esteemed panel. I want to start with you, Mr. Banga. You are working really hard to secure a new vision statement, shall we call it that, for the World Bank, ending poverty on a livable planet. What informs your perspective and how do you intend to go about driving that agenda? 

[Ajay Banga]
Thank you. It's great to be here with everybody and thank you all for being here. Since you've talked about Morocco at the beginning, I will still say, I am just impressed with how well they have organized everything they've done, despite what they're going through, and I cannot thank them enough. I will say it every time I speak. We have to thank them, and they also appreciate our support of being here with them. This is both of us doing it for each other, and I admire you for what you're doing. Thank you. 

[audience applauds] 

[Ajay Banga]
When I started traveling as a nominee, even before I actually got elected to the job, I met close to 90-odd countries. I met 100-odd an CEOs. I met 15 or so CEOs of asset management companies and other such locations. And one thing that came across to me each time was this idea that somehow you can divorce poverty and poverty alleviation, or the spreading of prosperity and the reduction of inequality, that you can divorce that from climate change, pandemics, food insecurity, and fragility. That is a notion that makes little or no sense on the ground in the countries that face this problem. For them, it is an intertwining of crises, which is almost like a perfect storm that they have to find a way to deal with together. They cannot segregate them into neat little buckets. That doesn't mean you don't prioritize. That doesn't mean you don't pick and choose where you can do better. It just is that it's not something you can break up into its pieces. The reason for evolving the vision statement of the Bank was to widen the aperture by which the Bank looks as its task in the future, and to widen that from being the goals of poverty and prosperity, the twin goals as they used to be called, to saying “We will want to eradicate poverty but on a livable planet.” 

[Lerato Mbele]
Yes. 

[Ajay Banga]
And a livable planet means climate, pandemics, healthcare, food, insecurity, fragility. If you can't breathe and you can't drink clean water, there's very little point in eradicating poverty. I won't be alive to enjoy the eradication of that poverty. It is that serious for my grandchildren. If we don't take this with the seriousness that it deserves, that these are intertwined, that they are multipolar and that this, unfortunately, is the hand that we have currently been dealt and we need to deal with it. That is what we have to do. That's what I'm focused on. 

[Lerato Mbele]
I'm hearing people matter, the planet matters, shared prosperity. Those three principles all are encapsulated in the vision statement ending poverty on a livable planet. What I'd like to know is what the World Bank is doing to support countries in pursuance of their climate objectives. I ask you this question, Mr. Banga. I want to just give you a small preamble. So, I am an African, and Africa has contributed less than 3% to global emissions. Whenever there are discussions around climate change, even though the continent is the most susceptible geologically, there is a sense that the continent bears the greatest responsibility to come up with the fix. With a shortage of revenues domestically, countries are having to make a decision. Do we pursue our intrinsic development objectives or do we go for the climate objective? It almost seems like a trade-off. That's certainly what I'm seeing at a broadcast level interacting with communities, civil society, and policymakers. When we talk about what the World Bank is doing, and I will be asking what the IMF is also doing to support countries in pursuance of their climate objectives, it's this delicate balance that needs to be forged. 

[Ajay Banga]
Yeah. Well, first of all, I don't believe that you should have the impression that the owners of sorting the world's climate problems are on Africa. That is not correct and not appropriate. The fact is that the climate emissions don't originate here. Therefore, the owners of sorting out that particular aspect cannot be on the shoulders of Africa. What Africa can do is to learn from the mistakes of the climate-heavy emissions growth that has been done so far, and move towards a less emissions, heavy growth. That's a separate discussion from feeling the owners of needing to sort the climate problem on your own. I just want to make sure you understand that. The challenge is multiple and multidimensional. There is the issue of energy, of course, but Africa is a continent where 600 million people don't have access to electricity. So, if you don't get them the basics, it's no point discussing the alternatives. There is the issue beyond energy of transportation, heavy transportation. There is the issue of construction materials, there's the issue of methane emissions, and finally, even if you get all that right in the world over the next 25, 30 years, if you don't get carbon capture right, we're still dead in 2050. So, I think we need to understand that this crisis has multiple dimensions and has a sense of urgency that we need to approach it with across that. What can the Bank do for Africa across all those dimensions? A number of things. The technology for some of them is still new and nascent, but take methane. I want to stay away from only renewable energy. I know we're going to talk about that again. That's very important. I'll come back to it. But I want to talk about a couple of other things that get ignored. A large part of the methane production that comes out of agriculture doesn't actually come only from beef, it comes from the growth of rice. The reason that happens, as I've learned from our colleagues, is that when you fill a rice field with water and for sowing, and you leave the water in there till the harvesting, which is the way I was taught in India that rice harvesting had to be done, and that's actually not true. When you leave that, you get methane emissions which add up to a very substantial percentage of the total emissions from agriculture. But if you drain the water out after planting, and you insert limited amounts of water during the period of the growth and then back again before harvesting, you drop the methane emissions from the same rice by 60%. If we improve the cropping patterns, you increase the yield. So, tell me, you reduce methane, you increase yield. Which part of that makes no sense? It makes a great deal of sense. Yet, try putting that into practice in countries, it's quite difficult. The World Bank has begun to get this done in Vietnam, in China, in Indonesia. It needs to get to other places. That alone is a way of changing things. This doesn't require trillions of dollars of investment. Not everything we discuss is about the trillions, although that tends to be what gets the headlines. It is about doing the things that will make a difference in the next few years to the generations that grow. Second point, and then I'll shut up so we can move on… 

[Lerato Mbele laughs] 

[Ajay Banga] …is that the World Bank has put in about roughly 40 billion dollars or so into climate fighting last year. Just to be completely clear, that is more in the developing world than any other UN institution, bilateral institution, or all the other multilateral development banks put together, just so you understand. Off that 40 billion, 50% has gone into adaptation and 50% into mitigation. We made a commitment as an institution much before my time. All this, by the way, has happened before my time. This is not in the last 130 days that I waved a magic wand and the Bank turned on its head and started doing this. It's been going on for a while. The Bank made a commitment to reach 30-odd % of its lending for climate. It's at 40%. What the Bank does not have done enough yet is how to raise the really large sums of money that need to go in. All of this, 40 billion, 50% for adaptation, this is nice. But it's still inadequate to change what finally needs to be put to work, in particular for renewable energy, but also for construction materials and heavy transport. That's the challenge we should get to discuss. 

[Lerato Mbele]
All right, so also improving on efficiencies and just unlearning what has become status quo. Ms. Georgieva, I want to bring you to the conversation, same question. What is the IMF doing to support member states in pursuance of their climate objectives, recognizing some of these delicate policy choices? 

[Kristalina Georgieva]
The IMF is an institution with a very clear mandate: macroeconomic and financial stability, growth, and employment. In a world of changing climate, climate risks affect macroeconomic and financial stability. With the same token, climate action creates opportunities for growth and employment. This is why the IMF, two years ago, adopted a climate strategy, even when some were saying, “Wait a minute, IMF and climate change?” What do we do concretely? First, we have this unique role to keep a hand on the pulse of every economy through policy consultations we do every year. For countries that are high emitters, now we include carbon intensity, what they can do and what policies they can adopt to bring it down. For countries that are vulnerable to climate shocks, we include vulnerability in our assessment, what countries can do. And second, we help countries maintain financial stability. But climate risks, as Mark is going to tell us loudly, they are affecting financial stability. So, we are helping identify what can be done for, for example, banks to reduce risk in their portfolios, risk of exposure to industries that may be phased out, risk of exposure to investment in places where you should not invest. Three, we are a data institution. Now we have a program to integrate climate data in the way we describe economies. You have employment, you have inflation, growth. Now you have to have carbon intensity, vulnerability to climate shocks. And four, we are a financial institution, so we put money where our mouth is. We created a resilience and sustainability trust. It's a great innovation. We gave... We allocated to our members special drawing rights. This is a reserve asset. When it goes in the reserves of countries in strong position, it goes straight to sleep. It's a dormant asset. So, we call to members, “Please, lend through us this dormant asset to address climate vulnerabilities.” And 40 billion’s drawn today, 11 programs already in one year in place, six of them on the continent of Africa. This is what we do. 

[Lerato Mbele]
Thank you for that input. Mark, loudly. 

[Mark Carney]
Loudly. 

[Lerato Mbele]
The call has been made. Okay, so fiscal stability matters and data also matters. Then as Ms. Georgieva has explained, you're looking at various fields in which to direct investment. As has been suggested, energy becomes very important, agriculture becomes important, and just reducing pressure on urban space, a smart city. There is a broad spectrum of areas that need financial interventions to get countries moving in the right direction in terms of climate solutions. So , the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero, GFANZ, may I call it that? 

[Mark Carney agrees] 

[Lerato Mbele]
What are you doing, particularly at the country, level just to build that impetus and traction? 

[Mark Carney]
Okay. Well, first, let me just commend the work the IMF is doing in climate. It's incredibly important because it is macro-critical, but it's going to be solved at the country and local level. Exactly to the type of issues that you just raised, and I think the Minister will speak about that here in Morocco. The question is what role does the private financial sector play in delivering capital for those solutions at local level, and particularly on this continent, in these countries. What needs to happen, first and foremost, is a focus on going to where the problems are, providing capital to solutions. Now, some of those solutions are straightforward. They're in the energies of the future, and the competitive sectors of the economy, but many of those solutions are in existing elements of the economy, in the transformation in agriculture that Ajay just mentioned one example of, in heavy-emitting industries and cement, steel, et cetera, that this continent needs to grow and develop but needs to become lower carbon. You need some things, and I'll make this quick, but you need some things in the plumbing of the financial system to transform from that 150 trillion dollars of balance sheet that is in GFAZ. That's more than enough to solve the climate issue globally, let alone in Africa, in order to get it to where it needs to go. You need disclosure around emissions, obviously. You need plans to get those emissions down at the country level, at the company level of financial institutions. You need innovative financing mechanisms. We're working on with the World Bank in order to make sure that every dollar of public capital scales multiple dollars of private capital. You need some new markets that are developed, including for nature-based solutions and others. It's that comprehensive approach that's required. Last point is that those approaches need to be tailored to the situation. You rightly started out with the point that Africa has 3% of global emissions, left unsaid 17% of global population, probably a third of the climate impacts actually hitting this continent, a different stage of development, different stage of energy poverty. So, tailoring what I just said at a high level for African financial institutions and country platforms, country strategies, is what's essential. 

[Lerato Mbele]
Minister Benali, let's bring you to the conversation to understand just some of the challenges, but opportunities at country level, because you're literally at the face of humanity. Can you share with us how Morocco is approaching its climate and its development objectives? I'm sensitive to the fact that we've been told the two aren't necessarily trade-offs. They're interdependent. But how do you go about making the decisions to make them? 

[Leila Benali]
Yeah, and I like the sentence around the face of humanity, because it's exactly what we are talking about. The fact that people, when they come to talk to me, they want to talk about energy only, and I tell them “I'm the same person. My mandate is also to look into informal mining and sustainable development. I have to be looking into how you breed cows because methane contains carbon”. And how… we don't eat a lot of rice in Morocco, but I'll be very much open to the exercise of comparing cous carbon emissions to rice carbon emissions. But the whole point is… [panelists laugh] …whatever we do is carbon. We… 

[audience applauds] 

[Leila Benali]
We emit carbon. Human activity emits carbon. It's part of nature. Unless we want to have a very frank and honest conversation about how we live, and that's why I loved your sentence about the “face of humanity,” we will not get there. Let me get a couple of points there. Our new development model of Morocco is very much focused on four key facets. You know a couple of those, especially Kristalina, since she played soccer with us on Sunday. If I say that this panel is actually much better than a pre-cup meeting, I'm going to be accused to say that Morocco is stealing climate negotiations like they have controlled the World Cup, but that's a discussion for another day. Anyway, our new development model, systemic issue resolution. As we said this morning, let's not wait to be surprised by every crisis, climate-related or not, that we are hit with. It's a norm, and we have always been living like that. The humanity has always been tackling those crises, and these are cross-border and cross-generational crises that we have to deal with. Second point, global integrated approach. Again, I am the same person. I'm the same Minister of Energy, Mining, Sustainable Development, and Waste Management and Recycling. I cannot be schizophrenic. I am the same person, so it has to be integrated. Third, forward-looking perspective. Between now and 2030, we want to... 2050, we want to achieve the 1.5 degrees objective. We know what we have to do. We have to scale up and amplify nature-based solutions and other technology solutions that technology is giving us. I take the example of carbon capture, direct air capture. We know that, in the best situations today, we consume 2 to 3-megawatt hour for every ton of CO2 that we will 

[unintelligible]. We need to be efficient at that. We know that we need to do all the above. I mean, it's not and/or. Of course, Africa there, Africa and a few other regions of the Global South. I'm also putting some carbon sinks and carbon banks in South America and also, in Southeast Asia. It is also a solution there. Definitely a solution is to amplify those nature-based and technology. It's not either-or. We just don't have time. 

[Lerato Mbele]
I want to stay with you, Minister Benali, but really to segue to an issue that's been raised by all of you, actually, this idea of not dislocating the question of clean energy and energy security from the broader conversation around climate solutions. Both in terms of policy and regulation, which is what you would do as the Minister here in Morocco, how have you managed what is called the political economy challenges of the energy transition? 

[Leila Benali]
That's a great question. And… Again, people want to talk about energy a lot. But we always have to get them to talk about the political economy behind energy transition, because the fact is that we are embedding that integrated approach and bottom-up approach in all our policies, including the way we bring transparency into costs. Because my two or three megawatt hours to capture CO2, or my five kilowatt that I will need to have clothes in the house, in the distressed regions that were affected by the earthquake, or the fancy 500-megawatt solar panel that the World Bank has gently helped us finance, I need to minimize that cost delivered. It brings in a lot of democracy in the way you put transparency into the numbers of bringing and minimizing and scaling up those technologies in the energy transition space. Of course, and as I said this morning, regulators would fall a little behind, but the populations are going fast and the governments are going fast. Now we need to ensure that at the local level, the local constituents, the local governments and communities, are also increased in capacity to be able to accompany that decentralization and transparency on costs. That's just one example, I can give you others. Another example is in Research and Development, and I would love to say more about that, but I see you are… 

[laughs] 

[Lerato Mbele]
I'm going to defer to Ms. Georgieva now. Just in terms of mitigation and adaptation, we've heard the interventions that are needed. Can you tell us what are the policies, in your view, that help to unlock investments, but not just unlock investments, but at scale? Because we're talking here impact that's needed. 

[Kristalina Georgieva]
The mitigation actions and the adaptation actions are somewhat different. On mitigation, what we have seen is technologies being brought in cost terms to a level that they are commercially viable. Take, for example, solar. When we look around how today solar energy is becoming massively available, Morocco has an incredible production of solar energy. Anybody who wants to see the world of tomorrow, go and visit this place. 

[Leila Benali]
We’re organizing that. 

[Kristalina Georgieva]
Yes, and you will be amazed. Same with wind. When we look at technological developments and then bringing driving cost down, then investments on scale become possible. When we look at adaptation, it is more complicated because adaptation is so multifaceted. You need infrastructure to be climate resilient, you need agriculture to be climate resilient. You need to address so many aspects of it at the same time. Yet, I have seen this being done successfully. I'll give you an example, Bangladesh, a country that used to lose thousands and thousands and thousands of people when the flooding water goes around. I think in the largest disaster, they lost 160,000 people. Now, the same storms are hitting Bangladesh. In the worst case, there may be a couple of people, a couple too many, but no loss of life on the scale. Why? Because they built schools to be also places for retreat, not only for people, for animals. They built a system that alerts people, “Go there, save yourself and your livelihood.” They switched from chicken to ducks. Why? When floods come, chickens die. What do ducks do? They swim. That country-wide commitment to adaptation brings results. Now, I'm giving you the good examples. Where is the difficulty? The difficulty is decarbonizing emerging markets in developing countries fast enough to prevent the world going to hell. And for that, I have my dear friend here, the president of the World Bank, a fantastic institution. I have Mark Carney. And what we would do from the Fund? We would make sure that policies are in place that support them to drive private investment on scale. 

[Lerato Mbele]
Mark Carney, just staying on this type of policies that incentivize private capital to be deployed, what are your observations? What are the kinds of things governments can do, policymakers do, that says to the private sector, “Right, I'm ready to pay the risk. I'm ready to get involved?” The deliberated actions. 

[Mark Carney]
Well, it starts with being clear about what your objective is, and those objectives are going to operate at different paces, depending on your initial conditions and where you are. So it's not everyone... It’s different in Cameroon versus Canada, where you're trying to get to by 2030. First point. Be clear about the objectives. Secondly, the main elements are achieving those objectives in the energy strategy, in the agricultural strategy. Then thirdly, going to specific policies, your question, but you have to have the first two, just to be clear, because that helps anchor private investment, private expectations. Then you go to the specific policies around it. If I go to the energy side specifically, and I'll stick with that, ideally, you're providing some degree of demand certainty. Now, that demand certainty can be in public procurement standards for energy. It can be in regulation around energy mix. It can be in power purchase agreements, contracts for differences, depending on the technology. These elements, which provide a degree… It’s never perfect, but a degree of demand certainty against which large scale financing can come in. Then the third… Well, it's actually the fourth, but I'll pretend it's the third that I would layer into that. The other policies you do need are around the financial side to incentivize financing all elements of that transition. I'll finish with this point, which is in economies that have conventional energy mixes, so, oil and gas production, you can't shut those down overnight. That's not right. That's not a just transition. You need to build up the alternatives. You need to work with the communities, train people, undergo the transition, and all elements of that need to be financed. And they are equally worthy. You can't overnight divest your way to Net Zero. You have to be investing all across the chain. So that plumbing element of the finance works with the bigger climate policies, energy policies, the type the Minister Benali puts in place to get that capital fund. 

[Lerato Mbele]
So clear regulations and systematic interventions. Mr. Banga, I'm conscious of the fact that we haven't heard from you in a while, and I'd like to bring you back into the conversation. Everybody here obviously knows who you are, but just in case, we know you've had a distinguished corporate career and you understand the boardroom dimension very, very well. Now you sit in this role as President of the World Bank, a multilateral development finance institution. You know what decisions and conversations that take place in the boardroom are. You've said that for you it's really important to see how you can find synergies or common ground with the private sector. Could you just give us an indication of how you're going to foster those relationships? Because you've had the benefit of both sides, working on both sides, in pursuance of these bigger goals. 

[Ajay Banga]
All this came from the fact that if all this money is required to get mitigation and adaptation done, then where is it going to come from? It cannot come from government offers. All governments have stretched, they've got goals, they've got issues, there's a high interested environment, people have got… You know all that. It's not going to come from only the multilateral development banks. No matter how much I would like to believe that we are the solution to everything, all of us put together, our balance sheets and our capacity, add up to a certain amount, very valuable, but not enough. We bring knowledge on various things, very valuable, but you still need the money to come through. In my way of thinking, there are three places to go for the money. I'm going to broaden my answer beyond the private sector, because otherwise we wouldn't get to discuss it and it'll get lost. The first one is a non-popular topic. Actually, they're all unpopular, but let's put them anyway. The first one is subsidies. The world spends 1.25 trillion dollars on subsidizing fuel, agriculture, and fisheries, which, in turn, has between 5 to 6 trillion dollars a year of environmental impact. I'm not saying you can get rid of all of those. I consider some of those subsidies mission-critical for the social contract between a government and its citizens. But I don't believe that 1.25 trillion dollars qualifies in that number. If you look at Europe, Europe used to spend close to 60 billion dollars a year on fertilizer subsidies. They're now spending the same money with their farmers, but to incentivize them to use less fertilizer. That, to me, is a clever way of taking a subsidy which was environmentally challenging and converting it to a subsidy that is environmentally useful. I just believe that this topic of subsidies needs discussion. It gets lost very easily because of the politics involved, but everything they’re dealing with right now has politics involved, and we need to discuss it. The second topic is a similar one. It's voluntary carbon markets. Mark Carney first talked to me about voluntary carbon markets probably five or six, seven years ago. I forget when. I think he was still at the Bank of England and he was my regulator. We were having a walk in his office and we started talking about it. I knew very little about them then. I know a little bit more now, but I know only enough to be dangerous. The World Bank is a few months away from being able to convert real forestry change into credits on a voluntary carbon market. It will impact countries in Africa, which is blessed with forestry. Congo is one of those, but it will impact countries in Latin America and in Asia. I was in Indonesia. I saw mangrove plantations being redone by the government of Indonesia. If they do them well, they will get 67 million tons of carbon saved over the next three decades, at different points of time in the decades. If we get this carbon market going with the certification from the Bank that this is a true check of green credit, meaning nobody's deforesting here and reforesting there, and trying to greenwash their way through it, then I believe even, if people get $10 a ton on it, these projects become very different, with a very different viability. And very different for a Minister who has to all the time balance requirements of money. That's a second topic, and I don't want to make light of this. It's a very difficult topic. I'm sure we will get criticized for it, but I believe if you don't make progress forward, because you're scared of that criticism, then we will lose this opportunity to be able to transfer resources from the people who can afford it and need to for the emissions they cause to the people who can afford not, but can help with carbon sinks. To talk about carbon taxes is not as simple. If you believe that a citizen living in Mississippi will be taxed to enable money to come to Sudan, that is the last time the US President will get voted to power. So we can say this, but it's very difficult to get it done. I'm trying to tell you that the better way to do it is a voluntary carbon market which enables the money to move. Third, private sector. To me, we should be careful how much we tout the private sector as a solution in terms of pace. I believe it takes time, because these things don't change overnight. But I will tell you that in mitigation, in the larger middle-income countries where we need to bend the curve on emission-heavy growth for the future, there are enough private sector investors with projects who would like to be able to invest in those countries. They are left with two risks that they do not understand and that go beyond their comprehension. The first is political risk in terms of either government changes. Any promises made are gone, tariffs that we talked about are gone, that kind of risk. The second risk is effect risk. Those are the two extremes. Foreign exchange risk is more difficult to find an easy fix to. Political risk, we actually have ways, including getting the right regulatory policy laid out by smart ministers and regulators in advance, which is what she will tell… There's a QR code that she's carrying around, which actually is quite useful. I actually scanned it and took a quick look at the seven papers underlying between the last panel and this one. She has got something going on getting clarity on regulatory policy. You get that? In the private sector, a CEO will say, “Okay, at least in Morocco I know where they're going.” Then we can sell political risk insurance. MIGA, which is one of our arms, does that. We've just received approval from our board to enable MIGA to provide that service to every multilateral development bank, not just the World Bank. Now that's going to be interesting and it's really important to do. Can we scale that up to many billions more than it is today? Yes, that's our job, and we're trying to get that done. Then the last part, the foreign exchange part, ask me after a year, because right now I have no clue how to solve that one. 

[audience applauds] 

[Lerato Mbele]
All right, as we wind down our conversation with very little time left, I just want to say to our online audience, some of the questions that have come through, I am trying to filter them through and get them asked to the audience. But we also have a panel of experts who are engaging with you and answering your questions in real time. But I will use this one question as a final question to all of our panelists. As you can see, we are on the clock. So, TV rules apply. The shortest, sharpest answer, please. In terms of getting developing countries to prioritize climate change, what can be done to build traction? But on top of it all, what are the solutions? We all often talk problems, but what's the solution? I'm trusting you, Madam Georgieva. To be the first to start off. 

[Kristalina Georgieva]
What we have on our site is Mother Nature. Mother Nature has awoken all policymakers everywhere. I used to meet with leaders from Africa ten years ago, and they would say, “This climate change thing, it is for the West, not for us.” No more. What are the solutions? Well, there is no silver bullet, but if you put in place good policies that promote sustainability, if you have the development finance to unite rather than chase individual activities, if we work together, and this is what we pledge to do, and basically get governments to remove barriers for private sector participation, then we would see good things happening. Above all, we need to move from the culture of pointing fingers to the culture of holding hands. 

[Lerato Mbele]
Absolutely. 

[Kristalina Georgieva]
We are in this together. 

[audience cheers] 

[Lerato Mbele]
Okay, Ajay Banga, solutions very briefly. 

[Ajay Banga]
The only thing I'd add to that is, I think, incentivizing countries who are going out of their way to add to the global public good, whether that is through concessional financing, lower prices, longer-term tenors, that's important. But I also think the voluntary carbon market piece. Don't lose sight of that idea. That is the ultimate way of getting money to move in the right direction. 

[Lerato Mbele]
Ms. Benali 

[Leila Benali]
I would say, get the politicians out of the room, let the economists decide and craft for us voluntary carbon markets, carbon taxes in some places, but a price of carbon that embeds the value of humanity, the value of life. Then you bring the politicians back in the room to finish the negotiation. 

[audience applauds] 

[Lerato Mbele]
And Mark Carney 

[Mark Carney]
I agree with that. I would recognize that this is, what we're talking about, is not just a necessity, but it's a leapfrog technology. This continent, leapfrog parts of it in mobile telephony, in finance, it can do it in energy, having that attitude. Then we can have a celebration dinner. And I took his note that it should be duck with cous-cous. 

[audience cheers] 

[Lerato Mbele]
I want to thank our esteemed panel for their time and sharing with us their great insights. There are a few things I've learned from this conversation that the closing window to make this transformation happen in countries at all stages of development, it exists, but there's urgency needed. Financing is clearly important, if we're really going to get things moving forward. To send a strong signal, we need sound policies to get the investors to come through. And yes, if we want a fair shot at a livable planet, we have to work together, partnerships, partnerships, and partnerships. That brings us to the end of this event. We hope it's been informative and engaging for all of you. You can watch the replay of the session and other events at worldbank.org/annualmeetings. Please, continue engaging, sharing your comments online using the hasthtag WBmeetings. We'd love to hear from you. Thank you so much for joining us. 

[audience applauds]

00:00 Welcome | Country Action for a Livable Planet

02:12 Driving the agenda of ending poverty on a livable planet

05:30 WB & IMF: Supporting countries in pursuance of their climate objectives

14:45 Building impetus ands traction at the country level

18:06 How Morocco is approaching its climate and development objectives

22:02 Visions from Morocco on the political economy challenges of the energy transition

24:25 Policies to unlock investments at scale

28:03 Investments and risks

30:45 Synergies with the private sector

37:56 Getting developing countries to prioritize climate change

41:08 Closure