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Macroscope | A G20-led finance facility against climate change could speed up emissions reduction
- Poor countries’ greenhouse gas emissions are rising fast, and they need help to both deal with climate change and avoid becoming big polluters themselves
- G20 nations should launch a finance facility against climate change on the lines of the Next Generation EU instrument with the aim of reducing carbon emissions quickly
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Despite their best efforts, the global community once again disappointed at the COP27 UN climate change conference in Sharm el-Sheikh last fall. Specifically, it fell well short of making concrete headway on delivering the financial support to the most climate-vulnerable developing countries.
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This had been promised since at least the climate summit in Copenhagen in 2009. Back then, a goal was set for mobilising US$100 billion a year in public and private finance by 2020. This goal has never been reached – not by a long shot.
This matters because poor countries are bearing the brunt of a climate crisis caused by much richer countries. It also matters because poor countries’ greenhouse gas emissions are rising quickly.
Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia accounted for a combined 30 per cent of emissions by Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries as recently as 2000. This share has risen to close to 60 per cent and, on current trends, will surpass 100 per cent in the early 2040s. High population growth in poorer countries will see to that.
Poor countries do not only need support in their role as emissions victims. They also require financing to avoid becoming, as China already has, emissions perpetrators themselves.
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The surprising hurdle slowing China’s switch to green energy
The surprising hurdle slowing China’s switch to green energy
At the heart of the problem lies a lack of public funds in both poor countries – many of which are on the brink of a debt crisis already – as well as rich countries. The budgets of the latter have already been hammered by the Covid-19 pandemic, an energy crisis and a looming recession.
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