High Level Roundtable at WIC 2024 'Discourse at COP29 – Implications and Opportunities for the Investment Community'

The Conference of the Parties (COP) is the group of nations that have signed the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which was put together in 1992. It commits them to act together to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations “at a level that would prevent dangerous and anthropogenic (human-induced) interference with the climate system.” Since then, the Parties, or nations, have met almost annually.

In December 2023, the COP28 Presidency delivered a final cover decision that includes language on the need to transition away from fossil fuels for the first time in a UN text. The cover decision recognized the role of the private sector in investing in the transition and the need to strengthen policy guidance, incentives and regulation to facilitate the scale of investments required for the transition. The cover decision urged governments to strengthen cooperative action with the private sector to scale the deployment of existing climate technologies and foster innovation for the development of new technologies.

The scale of transformation that the energy transitions entail for the countries in Global South are very ambitious and would entail a path that has never before been followed by other countries. And the key to the country’s transition towards low policies, actions by progressive businesses, international cooperation and access to green technologies and finance. For such countries, addressing climate change means bearing a massive cost to their economies, sacrificing their development to support a clean energy transition.

The high-level roundtable hosted by Invest India and TERI shall aim to decipher the outcomes of the COP29 conference, including the implications and opportunities for the finance and investment community. The roundtable will aim to delve into key decisions, and mechanisms to foster innovative and inclusive solutions to close the finance gap.