Rich polluting nations are three years behind on their promise to provide $100 billion a year in climate finance to low- and middle-income nations as global greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise and climate change continues to wreak havoc on the people and places least responsible for the problem.
Even worse, Oxfam claims that the actual assistance they provide, which comes mostly in the form of debt that must be repaid, is significantly less than the numbers reported.
Oxfam’s ‘Environment Money Shadow Report 2023’ distributed today shows that while givers guarantee to have activated $83.3 billion out of 2020, the genuine worth of their spending was — probably — $24.5 billion. Because it includes projects for which the climate objective has been overstated or as loans cited at their face value, the $83.3 billion claim is an overestimate.
These funds are actually potentially hurting rather than helping local communities because they are providing loans rather than grants. This is because they add to the debt of countries that are already very indebted, which is especially true in this time of rising interest rates.
Instead of providing new funds, donor nations are repurposing up to a third of their official aid contributions as climate finance, and loans now account for more than half of all climate finance provided to the world’s poorest nations. As Canada aims to fulfill its $5.3 billion (CAD) international commitment to climate finance between 2021 and 2025, the most recent federal budget in Canada cut foreign aid by 15%. This could put other international assistance priorities in serious jeopardy.
“This is utterly unfair. Low-income nations are treated with contempt by wealthy nations and elites who are most to blame for the climate crisis. They are fatally undermining crucial climate negotiations in this manner. Dana Stefov, Policy Lead on Climate Justice and Women’s Rights at Oxfam Canada, stated, “Donor countries like Canada should be massively scaling up their climate finance to meet the needs of a planet in crisis.”
Ahead of the pack up to the Bonn Environment Highest point (June 5 – 15), Oxfam likewise finds that environment related advancement supporting is to a great extent orientation blind. Gender equality received only 2.9% of all funding worldwide, making it a low priority. In 2019 and 2020, only one third of climate finance projects mainstreamed gender, which means they took into account the particular needs, experiences, and concerns of both men and women. Gender equality was the primary goal of only 1% of Canada’s climate finance between 2016 and 2021, despite the fact that gender mainstreaming was used in close to 95% of climate finance between 2016 and 2021.
According to Oxfam’s estimates, the actual amount of money that rich nations will spend in 2020 to support climate action in low- and middle-income nations ranges from $21 billion to $24.5 billion. Of this amount, only $9.5 billion to $11.5 billion was specifically allocated to climate adaptation, which provides crucial funding for projects and processes that assist climate-vulnerable nations in addressing the harms that are getting worse caused by climate change.
When India, Pakistan, Central and South America, and East Africa have all experienced record heatwaves in the past three years, followed by flooding that displaced over 33 million people and the worst drought in over 40 years, Oxfam is very concerned that adaptation funding is not given enough attention.
“The world’s poorest countries, particularly the least developed countries and small island developing states, are simply not receiving sufficient support, despite their extreme vulnerability to climate impacts. Stefov stated, “Instead, they are being driven deeper into debt.”
Oxfam is profoundly worried that subsidizing for “misfortune and harm” — environment influences that can’t or have not been alleviated or adjusted to — still includes no anticipated spot inside the worldwide environment finance engineering. Misfortune and harm finance needs are pressing, with gauges saying that low-and center pay nations could confront expenses of up to $580 billion every year by 2030.
According to Oxfam, the UNFCCC’s ongoing discussions to establish a new global objective for mobilizing climate finance by 2025 offer a chance to reestablish trust between rich and low- and middle-income nations. However, this initiative will fail before it even gets off the ground if past mistakes are not fixed and simply repeated.
Climate finance providers ought to significantly expand their efforts and report climate financing case-by-case, highlighting the actual proportions devoted to adaptation and mitigation. There is similarly a pressing requirement for more award based funding for environment activity, and less energy toward advancing the cash they have all vowed to give.
