Developed nations are not contributing their fair share toward meeting the annual $100 billion pledge to support developing countries in reducing emissions and adapting to climate change by 2023.
This shortfall in contributions could slow down the clean transition and stir further mistrust in poorer countries, a recent analysis from the World Resources Institute (WRI) showed.
Despite the commitment, which is seen as key to trust and solidarity between the developed and developing countries and rooted in the fact that developed nations are responsible for the majority of the global emissions since industrialization, developed countries mobilized $79.6 billion in climate finance in 2019, according to data from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
In 2009, developed countries committed to a goal of jointly mobilizing $100 billion a year by 2020 to address the needs of developing countries in the context of meaningful mitigation actions and transparency on implementation.
The goal was reaffirmed under the Paris Agreement in 2015, as the parties committed to continue delivering on the goal through 2025.
Developed nations likely failed to collectively meet the $100 billion goal in 2020, a recent analysis from the WRI said.
The US, Australia and Canada provided less than half their share of the financial effort in 2018 based on objective indicators such as the size of their economies and the greenhouse gas emissions.
In total, more than a dozen of developed countries fell short of their responsibilities.
Ahead of COP26 that will take place from Oct. 31 to Nov. 12, the UK COP26 Presidency published a Climate Finance Delivery Plan to provide clarity on when and how developed countries will meet the $100 billion climate finance goal.
The plan showed that developed countries missed reaching the $100 billion goal but should be able to do so by 2023.
"While developed countries have significantly scaled up their support over the last decade, the $100 billion goal was unlikely to have been met in 2020 and is likely to also fall short in 2021 and 2022," it said in the plan.
-"Disappointing and insufficient"
The plan is an endorsement of the limits of the process to get the $100 billion and also of the failure to deliver the amount by the required date of 2020, according to David Levai, an associate researcher at the Institute for Sustainable Development and International Relations (IDDRI).
Nonetheless, he told Anadolu Agency that as COP26 nears, the tension is rising with developed countries wanting to show that they worked hard to fill the financial gap.
"But the developed nations also came up with a plan to reassure countries that not only would this amount be met even if it is late but also it will be met over time meaning that every billion that was missed in 2022, 2021 and 2022 would be somewhat compensated, afterward," Levai said.
The plan acknowledged the disappointment of failing to reach the goal so far but said the redoubling of efforts from a large number of developed countries, including the UK, Canada, Germany and others, means that reaching the target is much closer.
Canada had announced earlier that it would scale up climate finance to $5.3 billion over the next five years while Germany confirmed it would increase its contribution from 鈧�4 billion to 鈧�6 billion annually.
The plan also confirmed that the UK is doubled its climate finance commitment to 拢11.6 billion between April 2021 and March 2026.
Levai said developing nations, especially the most vulnerable, are seeing a compounding crisis this year due to the health, climate, debt and fiscal crises.
Consequently, this crisis has not only led to mistrust and disappointment but also risks slowing down the transition to net zero.
"Also there are concerns on access to finance for climate adaptation. What we have seen is that this plan fails to do exactly that. At the end of 2025, we will know if the original goal has been fully met which is not clearly sufficient and disappointing. The reactions of the vulnerable nations show their disappointment as they were expecting something stronger and more robust," he said.
Christiana Figueres, a former executive secretary at the UN Climate Change Convention, advised during an online media briefing that the aim should be to protect the minimum $100 billion target but warned that this amount is not enough to cover even the adaptation to the transition.
By Nuran Erkul Kaya and Gulsen Cagatay
Anadolu Agency
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