COP26 takes place this week in Glasgow and we asked industry experts what they were expecting from the event. Nick Payne, head of strategy, global emerging markets focus at Jupiter Asset Management, says there’s an opportunity here to help emerging markets transition to a lower carbon future.
COP26 represents an opportunity for developed world economies to deliver initiatives that will support the transition of developing economies to a lower carbon future.
Action to tackle climate change will likely create both winners and losers in the emerging world. The losers over the medium term are likely to be those countries currently very dependent on a fossil fuel export growth model, such as Indonesia, Russia and the Gulf states. The challenge for these countries will be how to pivot their long-term growth models down another route.
There will, however, also be opportunities for emerging markets and companies to drive growth – particularly in the technological innovation that will be a key weapon in the fight against climate change. Being lower down the development curve means emerging economies are less burdened by legacy, meaning they can often leapfrog their developed counterparts when large technological change happens – take, for example, the advent of mobile telephony, which removed the need for a large-scale build out of fixed-line telephony.
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