UN leader pushes G7 on long-pledged climate cash
The head of the United Nations reiterated his call for G7 nations to fulfill their pledge to provide $100 billion in climate finance each year to developing countries, an action called fundamental to building trust and meeting the climate action goals of the Paris Agreement.
Speaking at a virtual news conference at the G7 Summit on Friday, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the world is “on the verge of (an) abyss” as temperatures continue to rise. He urged the G7 nations to meet “the three fundamental priorities”, which include fulfilling an overdue climate financial commitment to help developing countries cut emissions.
“Finance is the key instrument to support developing countries for them to be ambitious also in their targets of mitigation and for them to be able to address the huge challenges that populations are already facing due to the impacts of climate change.”
Guterres said they have yet to deliver on those promises.
“And so one of the things that I believe is very important from the point of view of the G7 and the G7 countries is to clarify how this $100 billion will materialize,” Guterres said.
In a statement, Zhang Jun, China’s permanent representative to the UN, voiced his support for Guterres’ call and stressed the G7 members’ failure to fulfill their $100 billion pledge “severely hampered the achievement of the climate action goals”.
‘Serious issue’
“This is a serious issue that this year’s 26th session of the Conference of the Parties of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change must face and solve. Otherwise, everything will only become empty talk,” he said.
At the UN’s 2009 Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, developed countries pledged to provide developing countries with at least $100 billion annually by 2020 to help them cope with climate challenges.
Over a decade later, developed countries are still unable to fulfill this commitment. The funds provided to developing countries are also far short of $100 billion, Zhang said. “This move disappointed the international community and has a serious negative impact on global climate cooperation. All parties unanimously call on developed countries to show sincerity and action to effectively help developing countries improve their ability to deal with climate change and avoid making the Paris Agreement ‘empty words on a sheet of paper’.”
Ethan Elkind, director of the climate program at UC Berkeley’s Center for Law, Energy & the Environment, said industrialized nations have a moral obligation to help less-developed countries deal with climate change because these nations have emitted and continue to be the source of the largest share of greenhouse gas pollution.
“Less-developed countries can often more cheaply reduce emissions by starting from scratch with transportation and energy infrastructure that is built around clean technologies, but they need help financing the upfront investment costs of these technologies,” Elkind told China Daily.
If such investments are done right, they can both reduce emissions and help less-developed nations become more resilient to the worsening effects of climate change, such as developing a more decentralized, renewablepower grid that is less prone to damage from flooding, hurricanes, wildfires and sea level rises, he said.
G7 leaders agreed on Sunday to raise their contributions to meet the decadelong $100 billion pledge, but some climate groups have said the group’s most recent proposal lacked details and firm cash promises.