ECB’s Elderson: We Need Informed Decisions on Climate Change Adaptation

4 December 2023

By Isabel Teles – FRANKFURT (Econostream) – European Central Bank Executive Board member Frank Elderson on Monday said it was necessary to make informed decisions on how to direct money for long-term adaptation to climate change.

In a fireside chat at the COP28 in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Elderson said that the Network for Greening the Financial System (NGFS) needed to consider the long-term implications of climate change. ‘So, we need to think how the world looks like at the end of this century in the 3-degree scenario. And science has thought about this and it’s the [ugliest] thing that you could ever think of.’

‘So, when we start pouring money into adaptation are we doing this to just gain time, 10, 20 years? 30 years, 40 years?’, he said.

Decision-making regarding adaptation to climate change and migration needed to be made considering scientific evidence, he said, in order to calculate present and future risks.

‘And that is something that today in the central banking community, as far as I know, nobody is doing’, he said.