South Africa president urges West to deliver pledge to end coal

South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa has called on western nations to deliver a financial package they promised to help the nation speed up its move away from coal.

US, Britain, France, Germany and European Union pledged a deal valued at 8.5 billion Dollars which includes initiatives to help fossil fuel workers move to greener industries.

Ramaphosa speaking at UN climate summit COP27 in Egypt said they looked more closely at it but found only 2.7% was grant money as the other proportions were loans,”

When asked if any of the money had materialized, Barbara Creecy, South Africa’s environment minister added the first has come through and that the sum involved was $600m.

When the deal was announced, former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson told the United Nations COP26 meeting in Glasgow that it would help move the world toward meeting its climate targets by “choking off international finance for coal”.