Dear delegates,
Today, at the Stocktake on Pre-2020 implementation and ambition, you will have one of the last opportunities to reflect on how well (or how badly?) you are doing in meeting your 2020 targets. One of them is the climate finance goal of US$100 billion a year that developed countries promised to provide and mobilise by 2020. With the deadline looming large, three things need to be foremost in your minds ⎯ and your interventions during the session:
Time to acknowledge and bridge the adaptation finance gap. On the last count only around a fifth of the overall climate finance provided and mobilised went to adaptation. Despite repeated commitments to balance adaptation and mitigation finance, you, developed countries, are still failing to respond to the growing needs of vulnerable populations on the frontline of the climate crisis. The Pre-2020 Stocktake is your chance to fix this, by committing to urgently increasing your adaptation finance. Making new pledges to the Adaptation Fund would not be such a bad idea.
Time to be transparent and fair. Today, we expect you to say that you will meet the USD100 billion goal… but let’s be honest, if you do, it will be entirely on your own terms and much of what is being counted should not be – “clean” coal and non-concessional loans to name two examples. If these weaknesses, gaps and inconsistencies remain unaddressed, they will continue to undermine trust in climate finance and the $100bn. It is time to fix them as part of the new rules for transparency.
Time to be modest. Impacts of the climate crisis are growing at an unprecedented pace, along with climate finance needs. Adaptation finance needs alone could reach up to $300bn a year by 2030. In 2020, you will not have time to congratulate yourselves. Instead, you should make sure that from the floor of $100bn, the provision and mobilisation of climate finance will increase between 2020 and 2025. By then, and in light of the forthcoming needs assessment report by the Standing Committee of Finance, you will have to decide on a new – and ambitious – collective goal on climate finance. Let us be clear: we are in a climate emergency and cannot afford a stagnation of climate finance.