‘Utterly shameful’: Richer nations delay meeting $100bn climate finance target until 2023
Delivery plan unveiled by UK COP26 Presidency concedes key $100bn target will not be met this or next, sparking fierce criticism of richer nations on the eve of Glasgow Summit
Richer nations have yet again failed to meet their pledge to collectively provide $100bn a year to those developing nations worst impacted by the climate crisis from 2020 onwards, with the “totemic” target now not expected to be met until 2023. The new funding package for the 2020 to 2025 period does mark an increase on previous levels of climate finance, but the failure to meet the 2020 deadline was still widely interpreted as a major blow to the long-running international climate negotiations that are set to resume at next week’s COP26 Climate Summit in Glasgow.
The UK hosts of the Summit voiced their disappointment at missing the goal, while a number of climate campaign groups reacted angrily to the news, amid fears the ongoing shortfall in climate finance could undermine trust between nations ahead of the crucial Glasgow Summit.
Confirmation the $100bn target would not be met until 2023 came this afternoon as the UK’s COP26 Presidency unveiled a Climate Finance Delivery Plan to provide clarity on when and how developed countries will meet the $100bn goal for the 2020-25 period, which was originally agreed back in 2009 and has long been a source of tension between industrialised and developing nations at the UN climate talks.
Based on analysis by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the plan concedes richer countries are unlikely to make up the shortfall in promised funding both this year and in 2022, with finance having totalled just under $80bn at the last count in 2019.
The delivery plan suggests developed countries are expected to make “significant progress” towards the $100bn target next year, and expresses “confidence” it will be met in 2023 and each year thereafter, while also setting out a series principles on how to improve the delivery and effectiveness of climate finance.
The UK government conceded it was “disappointing that the goal has not been met so far”, despite recent pledges this year to increase climate finance from the UK, Canada, Germany, and others. Further pledges from developed countries “may be expected this year but are not ready to be included in the analysis at the time of publishing”, according to the delivery plan.
Analysts said the failure ofthe US, Australia, and Italy to increase their climate finance pledges ahead of COP26 all undermined the push to deliver on the $100bn target, while the UK’s controversial decision to cut Overseas Development Aid was also widely perceived as a blow to the negotiations. Meanwhile, the UK’s official report on the new delivery plan noted that private climate finance had “underperformed against expectations”.
COP26 President-designate Alok Sharma – who has previously described the $100bn goal as a “totemic figure” for global climate talks – acknowledged that “we can and must to more to get finance flowing to developing nations”.
“Scaling up climate finance has been one of my top priorities as COP President,” he said. “This plan recognises progress, based on strong new climate finance commitments. There is still further to go, but this Delivery Plan, alongside the robust methodological report from the OECD, provides clarity, transparency and accountability. It is a step towards rebuilding trust and gives developing countries more assurance of predictable support.”
He stressed that in the lead up to COP26 it was “vital we see further pledges from developed countries and action on key priorities such as access to finance and funding for adaptation”.
A number of climate groups were quick to criticise the delivery plan unveiled today, and the ongoing failure of richer nations to stump up the promised $100bn cash.
But others were more optimistic, suggesting the plan provided a framework for flows of climate finance to be increased further. Nick Mabey, chief executive of the E3G think tank, described the delivery plan as “just about credible”. “This should hopefully support collaboration between ‘high ambition’ countries going into the crucial COP26 negotiations, but more clarity will be needed in Glasgow on how to ensure a fair share of finance goes to helping the most vulnerable countries and communities respond to rising climate impacts,” he said.
However, Mohamed Adow, director of Nairobi-based think tank Power Shift Africa and a veteran observer of UN climate talks, slammed the announcement as “utterly shameful”.
“The $100bn of climate finance is not only a lifeline to poor and vulnerable communities on the front line of a climate crisis they did not cause, it’s also the bare minimum that rich countries need to do to hold up their end of the bargain at COP26,” he said. “For more than 10 years they have been promising this climate funding would be provided and every year they delay and drag their feet. Poor nations will not be conned and the leaders of the developed world need to pull their finger out and get this money on the table if COP26 is going to be a success.”
Oxfam’s senior climate policy adviser Jan Kowalzig also denounced the delivery plan for failing to take account of the tens of billions of dollars that climate vulnerable countries are owed for each year that richer countries fall short on their $100bn goal.
The delivery plan, he added, also provides “no robust commitment to increase the share of finance for adaptation, or to provide more support in the form of grants rather than loans”.
“These are achievable amounts of money – governments have spent trillions on Covid-19 fiscal recovery packages, which show their ability to act in an emergency. This is an emergency,” he argued. “With the COP26 climate talks just a week away, time is running out for rich nations to build trust and deliver on their unmet target. This raises the stakes in Glasgow where wealthy governments must agree to more stringent reporting standards, on ensuring climate finance is directed to the right places and on a plan beyond 2025.”
Observers fear the failure of richer nations to deliver on the $100bn target is a major blow for chances of securing crucial global agreements on a host of issues at COP26, and will pose a huge challenge for the UK as hosts of the fortnight-long summit.
Earlier today Prime Minister Boris Johnson offered a cautious assessment of the chances of securing ambitious climate commitments from nations in a host of key policy areas in Glasgow, remarking that he is “very worried” that the Summit “might go wrong”.
Answering questions on climate change from schoolchildren at an event in Downing Street, Johnson said it was important for countries to each make sacrifices and “agree something that’s difficult for them” in order to secure global agreements, but that “these things won’t be easy”.
“We need as many people as possible to go to net zero so that they are not producing too much carbon dioxide by the middle of the century,” he said. “Now, I think it can be done. It’s going to be very, very tough, this summit. And I’m very worried, because it might go wrong and we might not get the agreements that we need. It’s touch and go.”
The latest developments came as the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) – the body which oversees the global climate negotiations – today offered a sobering analysis of global climate pledges from countries to date.
Ahead of the start of COP26 in Glasgow next week it today published an updated report showing that all national Paris Agreement commitments to date would put the planet on a path to 2.7C of warming by the end of the current century.
The report compiles information from the 165 latest available national climate plans – or Nationally-Determined Contributions (NDCs) in the UN jargon – representing all 192 parties to the Paris Agreement, including updated announcements made since last month’s initial version of the report.
For the group of 143 Paris Agreement signatories that have submitted new or updated NDCs ahead of COP26, total greenhouse gas emissions are estimated to be around nine per cent below the 2010 level by the end of the current decade, according to the report.
However, it estimates that for all available NDCs of all 192 parties taken together, a “sizeable increase” in global emissions of around 16 per cent is expected in 2030, compared to 2010, easily scuppering chances of limiting average temperature rise to 1.5C and avoiding dangerous climate impacts.
UNFCCC executive secretary Patricia Espinosa said the message from the synthesis report today was “loud and clear”. “Parties must urgently redouble their climate efforts if they are to prevent global temperature increases beyond the Paris Agreement’s goal of ‘well below’ 2C – ideally 1.5C – by the end of the century,” she said. “Overshooting the temperature goals will lead to a destabilised world and endless suffering, especially among those who have contributed the least to the GHG emissions in the atmosphere. This updated report unfortunately confirms the trend already indicated in the full Synthesis Report, which is that we are nowhere near where science says we should be.”
However, concerns over the weaknesses of current NDCs and the failure to meet the $100bn climate finance target were countered somewhat this weekend by the news Saudi Arabia has become the latest country to set a net zero target and the publication of a new plan from the Chinese government detailing how it plans to slash emissions from its energy industry over the coming decades. The latest pledges mean more than three quarters of global emissions and over 80 per cent of global GDP is now covered by some form of net zero target.
