No outcome in Bonn: why money is key to climate action
- A climate meeting in Bonn, Germany, has failed to make much headway on the crucial issue of defining a new climate finance goal.
Highlights:
- By the end of 2024, countries have to finalise a new sum of money above the existing figure of $100 billion per year that the developed world must mobilise for the developing countries to help them fight climate change.
- The Bonn talks, an annual fixture in June, were expected to give at least some indicative numbers.
- But this did not happen. All that came out was an input paper, which was a broad description of the wish lists of different countries.
- The lists pertained to not just the quantum of climate finance, but also other associated issues such as who should be contributing, what should this money be spent on, and how the finance flows should be monitored.
- The paper is likely to be developed into a formal negotiating draft that can be agreed upon at COP29.
New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG)
- Under the international climate architecture set by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), rich and developed countries are obliged to provide money to developing countries to fight climate change.
- In 2009, the developed countries promised to mobilize $100 billion every year from 2020 towards this purpose.
- A report by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), a grouping of rich countries, two weeks ago claimed that this $100 billion target had been met for the first time in 2022.
- The 2015 Paris Agreement says that developed countries must periodically increase this sum after 2025, considering the rapidly growing requirements for climate finance.
- The increased target, or the New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG), for the post-2025 period, is to be finalized this year.
Need for adequate amount
- It is widely acknowledged that developing countries now need trillions of dollars, not billions, annually.
- A UNFCCC assessment last year said these countries needed about $6 trillion between now and 2030 just to implement their promised climate actions.
- A few months back, India formally proposed that developed countries should commit themselves to providing at least $1 trillion every year after 2025.
- The developed countries have not made any offer publicly. They have just acknowledged that the new amount has to be higher than $100 billion per year.
Debate over contribution
- According to the UNFCCC and Paris Agreement, only the countries listed in Annexure 2 of UNFCCC 25 of them and the European Economic Community are responsible for providing climate finance to developing countries.
- The listed countries, however, have been trying to shift the responsibility to others as well.
- They argue that many other countries are now economically better off than in the early 1990s when the list was made.
- They also argue that the requirements are too huge for the original group of listed countries to meet.
- China, the world’s second-largest economy, oil-rich Gulf countries, and others like South Korea are not part of Annexure 2.