Climate Finance Still Stalls Paris Deal

COP21: Settling arguments about who should provide the cash needed by poorer countries to fight and adapt to climate change is key to a strong agreement at the UN summit.

Offers of help to the developing countries to battle climate change have been falling out of the sky over Paris in recent days.

Yet despite the financial promises, the developing countries are still unhappy.  For one thing, they’ve been here before: in the past, many finance pledges to them have not been fulfilled.

A number of wealthier countries, led by Germany, have promised US$10 billion to the Africa Renewable Energy Initiative – an ambitious scheme to provide much-needed clean energy across the continent.

Other developed countries are contributing $4bn over the next five years to the Great Green Wall Initiative – restoring areas of land in the Sahara and Sahel, and making it capable of storing vast quantities of climate-warming greenhouse gases.

Increased allocations
Among a long list of other multi-million dollar initiatives, the World Bank – funded mainly by the developed countries – says it is substantially increasing allocations of climate-related finance, with a target of providing annual funds of $29bn by 2020, much of the money focused on projects in the developing world.

Meanwhile, business groups have been queuing up to offer ideas about investing in climate change-related schemes in poorer countries.

The developed world says that by 2020 it will provide $100bn in annual finance to developing countries to help them adapt to climate impacts.

But a recent analysis by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), indicating that the target was well on the way to being achieved, has been described as biased and misleading by developing countries.

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