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WGS 2023 in Dubai: Global experts call for urgency in humanitarian aid, climate action

The post-Covid world faces many other crises that threaten global trade, says WTO Director-General

Published: Tue 14 Feb 2023, 1:04 AM

Updated: Tue 14 Feb 2023, 1:05 AM

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The World Trade Organisation (WTO) has urged member states to accelerate the delivery of humanitarian aid to crisis-stricken countries and disaster zones to speed the recovery of impacted countries.

Speaking in a session titled “Post Globalisation: What's Next for Global Trade?” on the first day of the World Government Summit (WGS) 2023, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Director-General of the WTO, said member states had reached an agreement in 2017 that removes trade barriers hindering the provision of aid, noting that the commitment rate to the agreement reached 75%.

"Last June, the WTO also worked to remove the remaining obstacles that hinder the delivery of aid by the World Food Program", she added.

Iweala stressed that as the post-Covid-19 world faces many other crises that threaten global trade. She added: “We will witness only 1% growth this year, which comes as 3% less growth compared to last year, but there is still hope for an improvement in global trade.”

In another session, Makhtar Diop, Managing Director of the International Finance Corporation (IFC), called on world leaders and heads of government to cooperate in making direct investments to overcome climate issues.

Diop said the aim of the world leaders should be building a sustainable future, and bridging the financial gap to tackle climate challenges.

The General Director of the IFC stated that the challenge lies in the management of financial resources, estimating the world needs about $9 trillion of investment annually to tackle climate action and about $1 trillion annually to exert energy transition in many countries.

He indicated that the Covid-19, geopolitical crises, and devastating natural disasters have hindered the efforts of achieving climate goals.

“One of the major challenges we will face in the near future is access to water, so we need to discuss the use of technology and Artificial Intelligence to understand how to use water more efficiently and in a better way,”

He stressed that the 28th session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP 28), to be held in the UAE later this this year, should offer a genuine opportunity to discuss energy transformation issues and support climate action, including harnessing technologies for this purpose.

Diop confirmed that IFC has developed during the last period a new product that aims to monitor the reality of climate change in each country and is working on developing it.

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