Poor Nations Still Wait for Climate Aid
prepare for climate disasters and develop low-fossil-fuel economies. It was part of a larger plan, led by Hillary Clinton, as the American secretary of state in 2009, to put together $100 billion a year for poor economies through government contributions and private investments.
Many academics see contributions to the fund by wealthy countries as a moral imperative, arguing that the developing world is most vulnerable to the effects of climate change but least responsible for causing them.
“Certainly, the richer countries should bear more of the burden in the G.C. F. because they have more means and more at stake,” said Thitinan Pongsudhirak, a political scientist at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, referring to the fund by its initials. “Richer countries also have benefited from wealth accumulated over decades when climate issues were not at the forefront.”
The Obama administration delivered $1 billion of a $ 3 billion pledge to the program. But last year, Mr. Trump, while announcing plans to exit the Paris accord, said the United States would no longer pay into the fund.
Ms. Raman said that while she still hoped to see other developed nations “step up,” they had not yet made their exact commitments clear.
“We’re very horrified by the stance taken by the United States, but it’s not the only one,” she said. “All the developed countries are united around the United States in not making any progress on finance.”
World leaders vowed in Paris to avoid a warming of 2 degrees Celsius over preindustrial levels, a threshold that they deemed unacceptable. Yet there are varying estimates of how much money is being spent on fighting climate change in poor economies. And critics of the Green Climate Fund have questioned why much of the money it is distributing has been channeled through large development banks or private- sector enterprises led by investment firms. They argue more aid should go directly to governments in the developing world or the communities at risk.
“We want money, but we’re hardpressed to give our full blessing to the projects coming on board,” said Lidy Nacpil, the coordinator of the Asian Peoples’ Movement on Debt and Development, a regional alliance of nonprofits.
People who live in the Asia-Pacific region are “particularly vulnerable” to the effects of a changing climate, the Asian Development Bank said last year in a report, which projected Southeast Asia to be “most affected by heat extremes” in the wider area by the end of the century. Of 74 approved Green Climate Fund projects worth $ 3.5 billion, three are in Southeast Asia and they have a combined value of nearly $156 million, according to data provided by
Rich countries who caused warming are asked to pay.
the program. Nineteen others in the planning stage directly target the region.
Ms. Nacpil said climate finance was important in Southeast Asia because so many cities are in coastal areas that are vulnerable to sea-level rise. And because the number of coal-fired power plants in the region is expected to increase, she added, governments should be encouraged to invest in renewable energy.
Jenty Kirsch-Wood, a climate specialist with the United Nations Development Program, defended the Green Climate Fund by pointing to its benefits in Vietnam, where part of a $ 30 million grant has funded storm-resistant housing to people in typhoon-prone coastal areas.
But $ 30 million goes only so far in a country of 93 million people with a long, exposed coastline. And in a 2015 climate plan, Vietnam said that state i nvestments could provide only 30 percent of what it needs to adapt.
Oyun Sanjaasuren, the Green Climate Fund’s director of external affairs, said, “Many developing countries have made clear that they will not be able to reach their Paris agreement targets without international climate finance.”