Rich countries are making little progress towards meeting their pledge to provide $100 billion a year to poorer nations to combat climate change, the OECD said Friday.

Developing countries, which bear the greatest impact from climate change, received $79.6 billion in 2019, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) said in its latest report on the issue.

That is more than $20 billion below what wealthy nations promised to give every year starting from 2020 to help poorer countries curb their carbon footprint and cope with future climate impacts.

The 2019 figure is the most recent available and marked a two percent increase from the year earlier, a sharp slowdown from the rates of earlier years.

And watchdog groups have warned that even those numbers may be inflated.

"The limited progress in overall climate finance volumes between 2018 and 2019 is disappointing, particularly ahead of COP26 (the UN climate summit in November)," OECD Secretary-General Mathias Cormann said in a statement.

"While appropriately verified data for 2020 will not be available until early next year it is clear that that climate finance will remain well short of its target," he said.

"More needs to be done. We know that donor countries recognise this," he said, adding that Canada and Germany are moving forward a plan to mobilise the additional finance required to reach the $100 billion annual goal.

Meanwhile, the impact of the coronavirus pandemic is still unknown.

Low income countries have been hit particularly hard by the Covid-19 crisis, with waves of disease and lockdowns wreaking economic havoc, even as climate change-driven disasters and threats continue to mount.

Public climate finance from developed countries accounted for the lion's share of the 2019 figure, some $62.9 billion, with another $2.6 billion in government-backed export credits.

The rest, some $14 billion, came from private investment mobilised by public mechanisms.

The 2009 UN climate summit in Copenhagen mandated that poorer nations were to receive the $100 billion and the pledge was renewed in the 2015 Paris Agreement.

But where the money was to come from and how it would be allocated were not spelt out, which has made tracking progress toward that goal both difficult and disputed.

The promise has been a recurring source of anger in poor countries and it will likely be a key point of contention at the crunch UN climate talks in Glasgow in November.

Related Links
Climate Science News - Modeling, Mitigation Adaptation

Tweet

Thanks for being here; We need your help. The SpaceDaily news network continues to grow but revenues have never been harder to maintain. With the rise of Ad Blockers, and Facebook - our traditional revenue sources via quality network advertising continues to decline. And unlike so many other news sites, we don't have a paywall - with those annoying usernames and passwords. Our news coverage takes time and effort to publish 365 days a year. If you find our news sites informative and useful then please consider becoming a regular supporter or for now make a one off contribution.
SpaceDaily Contributor $5 Billed Once credit card or paypal		SpaceDaily Monthly Supporter $5 Billed Monthly paypal only

1.5 C warming limit 'impossible' without major action: UN
Geneva (AFP) Sept 16, 2021
A new climate change report out Thursday shows that limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius will be impossible without immediate, large-scale emissions cuts, the UN chief said. The United in Science 2021 report, published by a range of UN agencies and scientific partners just weeks before the COP26 climate summit, said climate change and its impacts were accelerating. And a temporary reduction in carbon emissions caused by the Covid-19 pandemic had done nothing to slow the relentless warm ... read more