Rich nations haven’t delivered on billions for climate damages

Developing world calls for the funds, fast

After years of promises of new climate funding, the developing world is coming to grips with a disappointing reality: Money still isn’t coming through fast enough to address the mounting challenges of climate change.

Promises from some of the world’s biggest economies, including the United States and China, haven’t been panning out. Many are years behind schedule or still years away from sending money, delayed by political fights, bureaucratic snags, and debates over new rules to expedite aid from development banks and private donors.

Floods this year in Libya and India have killed thousands, while typhoons have lashed Asia. Climate-fueled disasters are mounting, with many diplomats noting a series of disasters last year in Pakistan alone responsible for more than $30 billion in physical and economic losses. A recent analysis by The Washington Post and Carbon Plan, a nonprofit climate research group, showed that by 2030, 500 million people around the world, particularly in places such as South Asia and the Middle East, would be exposed to dangerous heat, raising the prospects for heat-related deaths and illnesses.

Last month, the United Nations estimated the global shortfall in funding to cope with this onslaught amounts to several trillion dollars. While Western countries have started to mobilize vast sums for their own clean energy transitions, government officials and other diplomats say poor and vulnerable nations, where the need is often greatest, are being left out.

Khadeeja Naseem, the Maldives’s minister of state for environment, climate change, and technology, called 2023 “a letdown.” This year’s upcoming UN Climate Change Conference, known as COP28, is supposed to help spur progress by assessing how far the world has come at addressing climate change. Instead, Naseem said, this has been a year of falling further behind.

“What’s available is far less than what’s needed,” Naseem said in a statement. “We are not able to keep up with addressing impacts, disaster after disaster.”

Friction is building at international summits leading up to the global climate talks starting on Nov. 30 in Dubai. On Thursday, environmentalists and some diplomats criticized wealthy nations for offering just $9.3 billion to replenish the Green Climate Fund, which supports climate-friendly projects in developing countries, at a pledging summit in Germany. The United States was among a handful of countries to offer no new money at all.