Rich countries will miss a key promise they made to the poor world on the climate crisis by failing to provide the money necessary for them to cope with its effects, damaging the prospects for global action, the UN secretary general has said.<\/p>\n
Developing countries were supposed to receive at least\u00a0$100bn (\u00a375bn) in financial assistance<\/a>\u00a0from public and private sources this year and in future years to help them cut greenhouse gas emissions and deal with the ravages of extreme weather. The promise was one of the\u00a0cornerstones of the 2015 Paris agreement<\/a>\u00a0and will be a key element of\u00a0next year\u2019s Cop26 climate talks<\/a>.<\/p>\n \n But the funding this year will fall short of the longstanding pledge, which will have a damaging impact on the trust that developing countries place in the Paris agreement, Ant\u00f3nio Guterres told the Guardian.<\/p>\n The secretary general said: \u201cIt is clear we are not yet there [on the $100bn target]. In 2020 this will not happen. All the indications I have are that in 2020 we would be below that level of support from the developed world to the developing countries in climate finance both for mitigation [of emissions] and adaptation [to the impacts of climate change], from\u00a0public and private sources<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n He warned of the impacts of that failure: \u201cThat will be negative, in any case. We need to gain confidence in the developing world. And one of the key instruments of confidence is to implement what was promised and the commitments that were made. And one of those commitments is $100bn.\u201d<\/p>\n Guterres said the UN was preparing a report that would set out how far climate finance was off target. He said rich countries would have to regain the trust of the developing world if more countries were to pledge to reach net zero emissions around mid-century.<\/p>\n \u201cTo have, and I hope that we\u2019ll be able to have, India onboard for net zero, Indonesia onboard for net zero \u2026 All this requires an effort of trust, and trust is only possible if the developed countries in general are able to fulfil their promises to the developing world,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n He hoped the $100bn target would be met next year, when governments will meet to set out their plans to fulfil the Paris agreement at Cop26 in Glasgow. For that meeting to be a success, countries are asked to come forward with improved plans for meeting the Paris goals of holding global heating well below 2C, with an aspiration to limit temperature rises to 1.5C, beyond which scientists say there will be devastating impacts on the natural world.<\/p>\n An increasing number of countries, including some of the world\u2019s biggest emitters \u2013 China, the EU, Japan, the UK, South Korea and now the US under the president-elect, Joe Biden \u2013 have adopted or signalled their intention to adopt a\u00a0target of net zero emissions<\/a>. Guterres named several countries that had still to sign up, singling out Australia, Russia and Brazil as well as India and Indonesia.<\/p>\n While many countries had spoken of the need for a \u201cgreen recovery\u201d from the Covid crisis, few were directing their rescue funds towards the low-carbon projects that would make a difference, he said.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not the same in all countries, but globally it\u2019s not happening. If you look at the G20 countries, and they represent probably 80% of the global economy, you have the recovery money used in fossil fuel-related industries and activities [that is] 50% more than the recovery money invested in the green economy.\u201d<\/p>\n The Guardian recently found that the\u00a0global green recovery was faltering<\/a>\u00a0as investments in the high-carbon economy\u00a0vastly outweighed<\/a>\u00a0those in the low-carbon economy in many countries. Before a summit of world leaders this Saturday to mark the fifth anniversary of the Paris agreement, Guterres said leaders needed to do much more.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is clear that we are not yet there [on a green recovery]. It is essential to transform the recovery policies in a way that makes recovery from the Covid inclusive and sustainable \u2026 It doesn\u2019t make sense to use taxpayers\u2019 money to ruin the planet.\u201d<\/p>\n He added: \u201cWe are close to a point of no return. We need to make sure that we act before that point of no return.\u201d<\/p>\n He said more countries would need to follow the lead of Denmark, which last week\u00a0halted new exploration for oil and gas<\/a>. \u201cLet\u2019s be clear: we will never get to 1.5C as a limit if we don\u2019t keep below the surface a lot of the oil and gas that is today below the surface,\u201d Guterres said.<\/p>\n This would involve even going further than Denmark. \u201cOur objective is not only not to have more exploitation of new oil and gas resources [but] to make sure that a meaningful part of the oil and gas already discovered stays below the surface,\u201d he said. \u201cI hope more and more countries will move in that direction. The sooner the better.\u201d<\/p>\n One positive sign, he said, was \u201cthe fact the\u00a0new American administration is committed to climate action<\/a>\u201d. Guterres praised Biden\u2019s leadership in placing John Kerry, the former secretary of state who helped craft the Paris agreement,\u00a0at the heart of his climate efforts<\/a>. \u201cThis is a demonstration that there will be a very strong commitment of the US in relation to climate action next year,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is clear to me that the Paris agreement would not have been possible without the US engagement and leadership, and it\u2019s clear to me that there is no chance to have a global net zero coalition that is effective without the engagement and leadership of the US.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Rich countries will miss a key promise they made to the poor world on the climate crisis by failing to provide the money necessary for them to cope with its effects, damaging the prospects for global action, the UN secretary general has said. Developing countries were supposed to receive at least\u00a0$100bn (\u00a375bn) in financial assistance\u00a0from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1329,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1328","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-development-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rise-global.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1328","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rise-global.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rise-global.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rise-global.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rise-global.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1328"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/rise-global.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1328\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1331,"href":"https:\/\/rise-global.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1328\/revisions\/1331"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rise-global.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1329"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rise-global.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1328"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rise-global.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1328"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rise-global.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1328"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}