Richer nations divided over climate crisis funding for poor countries
Richer countries cannot agree on how much to spend to help the developing world fight climate change.
This year’s United Nations (UN) Climate Summit, COP29, in Azerbaijan in November is set to be dominated by talks over the global funding bill. Almost 200 countries need to agree on a new annual target for helping poorer countries cut their emissions and better protect their people from the impact of climate change.
Preliminary talks in Bonn, Germany, last week ended without progress on the amount each nation should contribute to the fund.
The new fund will replace the $100 billion a year that rich countries had vowed to provide in climate finance from 2020 – although that target was not met until 2022.
Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, Simon Stiell, said in February that the world needs to mobilize at least $2.4 trillion per year to meet climate change goals.
Spokespeople for the nations who would receive support from the fund said it was frustrating that wealthy countries were dragging their heels over climate finance but speedily pledging money for military responses to war or subsidizing energy sources that emit carbon.
“It seems like money is always there when it’s a more ‘real’ national priority for the country,” Michai Robertson, negotiator for the Alliance of Small Island States, told Reuters.
The International Energy Agency’s World Energy Investment 2024 report shows that emerging market and developing economies beyond China account for only around 15% of global clean energy spending.
