Pressure is growing on rich countries to set out exactly how they will deliver a promised $100 billion a year in funding to help poorer nations tackle climate change, with the UN chief and Britain on Thursday calling for a clear plan.
At a summit hosted by Bangladesh, finance ministers from a group of developing economies particularly vulnerable to climate impacts, known as the V20, urged wealthy governments to outline “how and when” they will meet the pledge between now and 2024.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a video address to the online meeting that “a clear plan” was needed to deliver on the climate finance target through to 2025.
“To rebuild trust, developed countries must clarify now how they will effectively deliver $100 billion in climate finance annually to the developing world, as was promised over a decade ago,” said the UN chief.
In 2009, donor governments agreed to increase climate finance channeled to vulnerable nations to $100 billion a year by 2020. Under the 2015 Paris Agreement, they said they would negotiate a yet-higher amount that would kick in from 2025.
But the latest figures from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development show that in 2018 about $80 billion was delivered, while a UN-commissioned report said in December it was unlikely the $100-billion goal had been met in 2020 amid the economic woes of the coronavirus pandemic.
On Thursday, Guterres asked rich nations and multilateral development banks to allocate half of their international climate finance to efforts to help poor countries and communities adapt to worsening extreme weather and rising seas.
Currently, funding to boost resilience is hovering at only about a fifth of total climate finance for developing nations, with the rest going to projects to cut planet-warming emissions by moving away from fossil fuels and adopting renewable energy.
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