G20 must give more funds to World Bank for Global South: Rockefeller's Shah

The foundation's president says COP21 Pledge of $100 bn from richer nations hasn't been met and is no longer enough

The president of the Rockefeller Foundation, Rajiv Shah, who is set to visit India on March 18, said that under India's presidency, the G20 nations should consider providing more capital to the World Bank and other multinational development banks. Shah told Business Standard that in order to provide more concessionary funding, the G20 leadership should increase capital in the multinational development finance system.

Shah, who has been the president of the Rockefeller Foundation since 2017, stressed that India’s renewable energy efforts and the need to reform international financial institutions towards sustainable development will top his agenda during his upcoming trip.

 “To deliver on the Paris Agreement’s goal of curbing global warming to under 1.5 degrees Celsius, it is crucial to finance and promote the scaling of renewable energy technologies. The COP21 Pledge of $100 billion from developed economies has not been met and is no longer enough. It’s imperative to reform the 80-year-old system of multinational finance developed which is now struggling to meet transnational crises such as Covid-19 and climate change. We need global leadership to increase capital in the multinational development finance system in ways that can provide more concessionary capital, particularly for infrastructure that can mitigate the effects of climate change,” Shah said.  

The Rockefeller Foundation has, together with the IKEA Foundation, The Bezos Earth Fund, and other partners, committed nearly $11 billion to partner with low- and middle-income countries to build renewable energy infrastructures that provide energy access with on-grid and off-grid solutions.

“The cost of renewable energy technology is far higher in the Global South than the Global North due to the cost of capital and the cost of technology. That is not just, and we must work to lower this “green premium”—by incentivizing private capital, by creating systems for pooled procurement, and by ensuring that innovators like India are central to the renewable energy supply chain,” Shah told Business Standard.

He added that India can be a leading supplier of technology not just for the energy sector, but for agriculture and public health, where climate effects will also be felt and must be mitigated.