Rich fall short on climate fund
Developed countries made almost no progress towards their goal of providing $100bn a year to help poor countries tackle climate change, new figures from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation & Development (OECD) show.
The data threatens to undermine the UN climate change conference (COP26) that starts in the Scottish city of Glasgow on November 1.
Developing nations say the funding — which has never hit its annual target — is key for them to pledge deeper emissions cuts that would help achieve the Paris Agreement’s goal of limiting global warming to 1.5°C compared with pre-industrial levels.
“There is no excuse: delivering on the $100bn goal is a matter of trust,” Alok Sharma, COP26 president, said in response to the figures.
“We have seen little progress and the OECD report shows clearly how much further there is to go.”
Total climate finance provided and mobilised by rich countries for developing nations was $79.6bn in 2019, an increase of just 2% from 2018, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation & Development said.
It would require a more than $20bn annual jump to meet the funding goal for 2020 alone. The rate of annual increases has only slowed over the past few years.
The US and UK are among developed countries working to ensure that COP26 is a success, but the financing shortfall could turn out to be a hurdle.
US climate envoy John Kerry has been crisscrossing the globe, including China and Japan, in recent weeks, seeking more measures for cutting emissions.
He assured India that it would get help in mobilising funds to step up its efforts.
In 2009, developed countries promised to mobilise $100bn a year by 2020 in climate finance, and that goal was reiterated again in 2015 as part of the Paris accord.
But that target has been missed, in part because former US president Donald Trump pulled the world’s richest polluter out of the deal. As a result, his successor, President Joe Biden, is under pressure to find more cash, while more than 70 countries, including China and India, have failed to come up with more ambitious emissions targets for 2030.