Wealthy nations to “get very close” to $100-bln climate finance pledge in 2022 – state sec

New pledges made at the COP26 climate change conference in Glasgow mean that wealthy nations will almost deliver on their promise to provide 100 billion US dollars per year in climate finance to support developing nations in 2022, German environment ministry state secretary Jochen Flasbarth said at a press conference at COP26 in Glasgow. Last week, developed nations announced that they will only reach the 100-billion mark in 2023, three years later than originally planned. But new pledges in the last two days, such as from Japan and Norway, have led Flasbarth and the Canadian environment and climate minister Jonathan Wilkinson, who were charged by the UK COP26 presidency to oversee the climate finance delivery plan, to adjust their estimates. “We will get very close to reaching the 100 billion in 2022,” Flasbarth said.“Our plan shows that we will then overachieve the target in 2024 and 2025,” Wilkinson added. Because of this, the 5-year-average from 2021 to 2025 will get very close to the 100 billion dollars per year promise, they explained.

Politicians were worried that trust in the promise, which was agreed at previous COP conferences, could be eroded after the 2020 target was likely missed and developed countries were slow to make financial pledges this year and last. To counter concerns that this may deter developing countries from pursuing climate action, Flasbarth and Wilkinson were tasked to develop the delivery plan. Recently published figures by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) showed that climate finance for developing countries in 2019 only amounted to about 80 billion dollars. It is clear that support for 2020 will remain well short of the target, but appropriately verified data for that year will only be available in early 2022, the OECD said.