China, India and Other Developing Nations Seek $1.3 Trillion a Year in Climate Finance
Request is made in paper presented at COP26 summit; richer countries say they aren’t ready to pledge beyond 2025
Wind turbines at a wind-power facility in Gouda, South Africa.
PHOTO: DWAYNE SENIOR/BLOOMBERG NEWSBy
Matthew Dalton
Nov. 4, 2021 11:23 am ET
GLASGOW—Most of the world’s developing countries have backed a demand for wealthy nations to channel at least $1.3 trillion in climate finance to them annually starting in 2030, the opening salvo in one of the most contentious negotiating topics at the COP26 climate summit.
African nations and a group called the Like-Minded Developing Countries, which includes China, India and Indonesia, said in a document they submitted to the United Nations at the summit that half the money should go toward funding renewable energy in the developing world and half toward protecting these countries from the effects of global warming.
Developed nations have long pledged to help pay for developing nations to respond to climate change. That promise was crucial to sealing the Paris accord in 2015, when the U.S., Europe and other wealthy countries agreed to provide $100 billion a year from 2020 through 2025.
“The post 2025 mobilization goal must reflect the ambition, progression and the collective agreement to stay well below 2 (degrees) Celsius and aspire to stay within the 1.5 degree Celsius temperature goal,” the paper says.
Developed nations didn’t hit that target in 2020, falling $20 billion short, and aren’t likely to meet it until 2023, climate negotiators said in a report in October. The shortfall has angered developing nations and complicated the talks in Glasgow.
