Climate finance still lags behind
(Sustainabilityenvironment.com) – Broken promise for this year, we will have to wait until 2023 to keep the promises of advanced economies to raise $100 billion a year for climate finance by 2020. Yet another reference to a theme, that of financial aid to countries most affected by climate change, which is one of the main thorns on the side of global climate action.
This is clear from the draft final communiqué of the G7 Finance Ministers’ Summit, which ends today. Its conclusions will then be approved by the Heads of State or Government on 26-28 June at Schloss Elmau in the Bavarian Alps.
“We are strongly committed to achieving the collective climate finance mobilisation goal of 100 billion US dollars per year from a wide variety of sources through to 2025 to address the needs of developing countries”, reads the draft statement. “We expect this goal will be met in 2023″.
During the negotiations at COP26, climate diplomats had tried to accelerate to reach 100 billion a year by 2022. On the eve of the Glasgow summit, in fact, the total harvest in climate finance amounted to 95 billion.
Read also Global Warming, COP26 commitments lead us to +2.6% C
So far, the German G7 Presidency has not speeded up on the issue of climate change. Last week, the meeting of Foreign Ministers linked action against the climate crisis quite closely with the maintenance of peace and stability, stressing that the impact of climate change and the loss of biodiversity and habitats knows no boundaries and addressing it is, therefore, a common responsibility.
However, progress should come in June, when Berlin tries to found a “climate club”: in practice, it is about using the G7 as hardcore of countries that should raise climate ambition. The club would be tasked with coordinating global action and could theoretically expand to an alliance of like-minded countries. At the heart of the club’s agenda will probably be cooperation on energy security, the most burning issue against the backdrop of the war in Ukraine.