PRESIDENT TO DOUBLE AID TO HELP WITH CLIMATE CHANGE
Developed nations have fallen short of their commitments
President Joe Biden announced plans Tuesday to double the funding the United States provides each year to help developing nations cope with the ravages of climate change and build greener economies.
Speaking at the United Nations, Biden framed the move as part of a broader return to multilateralism, saying the world must work together to combat daunting challenges such as the coronavirus pandemic, trade disputes and a rapidly warming planet.
Biden said he intends to work with Congress to boost the U.S. annual contribution to the problem to $11.4 billion, an amount he said is necessary “to support the countries and people that will be hit the hardest and that have the fewest resources to help them adapt.”
“This will make the United States a leader in public climate finance,” he said.
The new pledge aims to ease the distrust and anger among many small, developing nations who have done little to cause global warming but often have been hardest hit by its impacts. That rift has eroded the sense of unity that will be necessary at high-profile U.N. climate talks in Scotland in the fall, known as COP26, where world leaders face pressure to embrace a detailed global strategy to slow the Earth’s warming.
“Climate finance to help the world’s vulnerable people is the elephant in the room heading towards the COP26 climate summit,” Mohamed Adow, director of the African climate and energy think tank Power Shift Africa, said in a statement Tuesday. “It’s good to see President Biden is upping the amount that the U.S. is contributing, and others should certainly follow suit. However, the U.S. is still woefully short of what it owes.”
Developed countries pledged more than a decade ago to begin providing $100 billion annually by 2020 to help the most defenseless nations deal with the consequences of sea-level rise, heat waves, intensifying hurricanes and other effects of warming — and to hasten the transition away from fossil fuels as those economies grow.
But that money has never fully materialized.
According to an updated analysis this month from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, or OECD, developed nations mobilized $79.6 billion in 2019 to help poorer countries grapple with climate change — a 2 percent increase from the previous year, but still $20 billion short of what was promised.