- Saturday, April 20, 2024
By: Shubham Ghosh
AN estimate released by global organisation Oxfam on Monday (20) said wealthy countries are likely to fall up to $75 billion short of fulfilling their long-standing pledge to mobilise $100 billion each year from 2020 t0 2025 to help the vulnerable ones adapt to the dangerous effects of climate change and curb their emissions, Asian News International news agency reported.
The analysis came ahead of the informal climate talks between global leaders at the United Nations General Assembly – a key moment to get the target back on track ahead of the Cop26 UN Climate Summit scheduled in Glasgow, Scotland, in November.
On Friday (17), the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development released new data saying the developed nations gave only around $80 billion in climate finance in 2019.
Based on the current plans, Oxfam’s estimate says that the wealthy governments will continue to miss the $100 billion dollar goal and reach only $93 billion-95 billion per year by 2025, five years after the target should have been reached.
This implies that countries that are vulnerable to climate change could miss out on between $68 billion and $75 billion dollars in total over the six-year target period.
Extreme temperatures are likely to kill five million people every year, accounting for more than nine per cent of human deaths worldwide and this is expected to rise as heat-related deaths go up because of climate change which could lead to economic losses double than that caused by the pandemic but it is not being treated as urgently.
In 2020, the EU, UK, US, Canada, Australia and Japan spent more than $15 trillion on Covid-19 fiscal recovery packages — equivalent to meeting the climate finance goal more than 150 times over.
At the same time, total global military spending rose by 2.6 per cent since 2019 to just under $2 trillion — nearly 20 times more than the climate finance goal.
While some countries, including the US, Canada and Germany, have increased their pledges in recent months, their efforts have not been adequate. At the G7 Summit held in the UK in June, leaders repeated their commitment to narrow the gap, but those of France, Australia and Japan failed to raise their contributions above current levels. Several countries, including Italy, Spain and the Netherlands, have made no new climate finance pledges.
Oxfam also raised serious concerns about how wealthy countries are currently allocating climate finance.
While the UN Secretary-General, Oxfam and others have called for half the funds to be spent on adaptation, it is estimated that only about a quarter ($26 billion to $27 billion) of total climate finance in 2025 will be spent helping developing countries adapt to worsening climate changes.
