Rich Countries Still Falling Short on Climate Aid, Analyses Find
Rich Countries Still Falling Short on Climate Aid, Analyses Find - Yale E360
Flooding in Beletweyne, Somalia, May 2016. The African Union Mission in Somalia
Fifteen years ago, wealthy nations pledged to channel $100 billion in climate aid to poorer countries by 2020. New analyses find that not only were rich nations two years late in meeting this goal, but much of the money was existing aid that had been relabeled as climate assistance, or it took the form of loans.
A new accounting from the OECD finds that wealthy nations first reached their goal in 2022, delivering nearly $116 billion in climate aid. OECD chief Mathias Cormann said that surpassing the $100 billion mark was “an important and symbolic achievement which goes some way towards making up for the two-year delay, which should help build trust.”
But a new analysis from the Center for Global Development suggests that $27 billion of the 2022 total was existing assistance that had been relabeled or repurposed as climate aid. This is despite the expectation that wealthy nations provide aid that is “new and additional.”
Moreover, most of the aid in 2022 took the form of loans, which have historically channeled billions of dollars back to wealthy nations, according to a recent analysis from Reuters.
From 2015 to 2020, wealthy nations issued $18 billion in climate loans at market-rate interest. They also supplied another $11 billion in loans that required poorer countries to buy from companies in lender nations.
“From a justice perspective, that’s just deeply reprehensible,” Liane Schalatek, of the Heinrich-Boll Foundation, told Reuters.
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Related Knowledge Center: Climate economics
Climate change is now a driver of the world’s economy. The impact is profound:
- Catastrophic weather events — hurricanes, floods, droughts, high temperatures — are more frequent and more extreme. The cost can be measured in both the initial damage caused and the longer-term impact on the economy.
- Vulnerable communities are increasing climate-related investments, hardening infrastructure and taking other protective measures.
- Investment in carbon capture and storage technologies is increasingly rapidly.
- Governments are making investments and crafting regulations to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.
On top of all of this is the cost of uncertainty. As the Fourth National Climate Assessment, released in 2018 by the U.S. Global Change Research Program, says, “The assumption that current and future climate conditions will resemble the recent past is no longer valid.”