The financial industry needs to step up “and now” with “unprecedented levels of cooperation” to tackle the climate change crisis, affirms the CEO and founder of one of the world’s largest independent financial services organisations.
The urgent call for industry-wide action from deVere Group’s Nigel Green comes as all eyes turn to Glasgow as world leaders travel to Scotland for the COP26 summit starting this weekend. The event is expected to bring between 20,000 and 25,000 attendees alongside world leaders and business chiefs.
The goal of COP26 is to address the climate crisis, following up on the last event of this kind since 2019. It comes just a few months after the UN’s IPCC Report that described global warming as a “code red for humanity.”

Staple crops in eight African countries could decrease by as much as 80 percent by 2050 in some areas if temperatures continue to rise due to climate change, according to a report released by the UN’s International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD). This could have a catastrophic impact on poverty and food availability unless there is an urgent injection of funding to help vulnerable farmers adapt how and what they farm.
The organisation warned that COP26 will fail to achieve a lasting impact if world leaders continue to prioritise mitigation and neglect investments in climate adaptation.
The report What Can Smallholder Farmers Grow in a Warmer World? Climate Change and Future Crop Suitability in East and Southern Africa shows that if no changes are made to agricultural practices or global policies, erratic weather patterns, drier conditions and an increase in temperatures by 2°C will have a devastating impact on yields of staple and cash crops grown by small-scale farmers in parts of Angola, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Rwanda, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe. For example, in a worst-case scenario, the annual maize crop per household in the Namibe province in Angola could decrease by 77 percent by 2050.

The first UNDP Horn of Africa Resident Representatives forum closed with commitments on strengthening development ties across borders through support for joint analysis, planning and action.
The forum concluded that the future of the Horn depends, in good measure, on taking steps to help transform development conditions on the ground, whether to combat poverty, address the connected challenges of rapid population growth, climate change and sustainability, or promote peaceful and inclusive societies. UNDP leadership in the sub-region expressed their commitment in supporting a development paradigm shift from vulnerability and crisis to sustainable development and economic prosperity’.
UNDP’s Horn of Africa forum is an annual platform that brings together UNDP Resident Representatives from Djibouti, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan, and Sudan to discuss cross-border development planning and cooperation in the region.