The OECD headquarters, in Paris, on Sept. 3, 2009.Charles Platiau/Reuters
Developed countries achieved their pledge to provide $100-billion to help poorer countries cope with climate change in 2022, the OECD said on Wednesday, confirming the target was met two years late.
In 2009, developed countries promised that from 2020 they would transfer $100-billion a year to poorer nations buckling under the costs of worsening climate change-fuelled disasters.
They provided $115.9-billion in climate finance in 2022, meeting the goal for the first time, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development said in a report. The total also includes private finance mobilized by public funds.
The $100-billion is far less than the trillions developing countries need to invest in clean energy fast enough to meet climate goals and protect their societies from extreme weather.
But the missing $100-billion has become politically symbolic, stoking mistrust between nations at recent UN climate talks, as some developing countries argue they cannot agree to curb CO2 emissions faster if the world’s economic powers do not deliver promised financial support.
Finance will be the central topic at this year’s UN COP29 climate summit in Baku, Azerbaijan, where countries will negotiate a new global climate finance goal to replace the $100-billion target after 2025.
The majority – 69 per cent – of the $91-billion in public climate finance provided in 2022 was loans. That has prompted criticism from some climate-vulnerable countries, who say this exacerbates debt burdens.
Michai Robertson, a UN climate negotiator for the Alliance of Small Island States, said the group would demand that the new UN finance goal focused more on the quality of the funding provided.
“If you’re giving us export credits, if you’re giving us non-concessional loans, that cannot be considered as climate finance,” he said.
Already, nations are divided over the new target.
The European Union, the world’s biggest climate finance provider, wants more countries to pay towards the new goal – including large emerging economies like China.
China, now the world’s biggest CO2 emitter, has firmly opposed this in past UN climate talks. The list of countries obliged to contribute UN climate finance includes only around two dozen countries that had already become industrialized decades ago.