‘The key that unlocks all of these negotiations is really the money, finance,’ says Filipino climate justice activist Yeb Saño
MANILA, Philippines – The world largely failed its target to funnel $100 billion to developing countries every year. Now we’re dreaming of more.
As the climate fund target expires in 2025, the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Azerbaijan (COP29) is expected to create a new one that governments and civil society are already eyeing to be worth trillions of dollars.
Every year, heads of states and negotiators come together to discuss how to deal with climate change. A huge chunk of these deliberations has to do with the money that poor countries, those most affected by climate impacts, need to survive.
“The key that unlocks all of these negotiations is really the money, finance. From the very beginning, we’ve been closely following this process. This is the reason why ambitions are delayed,” Filipino climate justice activist Yeb Saño said in a press conference in Baku on November 14.
Saño, executive director of Greenpeace Southeast Asia, said civil society will keep watch on the specific number for the new target that is supposed to come out by the end of COP29 – its scale, scope, and structure.
When did it start and what has happened since?
The $100 billion target started in 2009 during COP15 when countries committed to come up with $100 billion every year for developing countries by 2020.
The following year, parties created the Standing Committee on Finance (SCF) to assist in this huge financial effort– including reporting of money that flows from developed countries to vulnerable ones.
In 2015, at COP21 in Paris, the $100 billion goal was extended up to 2025.
The world only achieved this goal two years late of the original target, mobilizing $115.9 billion in 2022, said a report from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
However, this figure is not set. Without a standard way of accounting, other reports did not come up with the same number.
International organization Oxfam’s assessment estimated $28-35 billion. The SCF, meanwhile, pegged the figure at $67.1 billion.
These three reports came out in 2024 and their calculations were for the year 2022. One silver lining that the SCF saw was that despite differences in reports, there was an overall trend of increase in finance, specifically between 2020 and 2022.
But disparity in reporting numbers reveals an important question at the core of climate finance: Which funding actually people deal with climate change?
The OECD took into consideration bilateral, multilateral funds, as well as export credits and private finance. More than half of these were loans. Meanwhile, Oxfam counted the grants equivalent of OECD’s data. The SCF relied on what Parties reported to them.
Oxfam noted that loans were “reported at face value” and not by the financial benefit to poor countries.
Often, the Oxfam said, the relevance of the fund to deal with climate change “is often exaggerated, so that reported volumes do not reflect amounts specifically directed at climate action.”
And now a trillion dollar goal
Beyond the number that will come out at the end of COP29, “we need to investigate what [it entails],” said Harjeet Singh of the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty on November 13 in Baku.
“Because our experience of [the] $100 billion goal is really tragic. And the reason I say tragic [is] because you provide money and you admit that 69% of that [are] loans at a time when developing countries are facing massive debt crisis,” Singh added.
Singh, among other civil society representatives, wore a lanyard that said, “Global North, pay up!” and “$5 trillion!”
Between $5.036 to 6.876 trillion are needed to reduce national emissions by 2030, according to reports submitted to the United Nations by 98 countries.
Philippine civil society demands $5 trillion every five years, or $1 trillion every year for the new climate fund goal.
This is the same call that other green networks carry, the same call that resonates in the rooms in Baku, and the same call the advocates wear on their neck in the global summit.
And if no number is set when COP29 ends? It’s not out of the ordinary, said Saño, “as many times, nothing happened in COPs.”
“But what is the implication to the Philippines?” asked Saño. “We know that for countries like the Philippines, any delay in progress especially in climate finance, we are the ones who are aggrieved. Our situation is getting worse.” – Rappler.com
Quotes are translated to English for brevity.
