For the Paris Agreement’s implementation, mutual trust is a key ingredient. This holds true also with regard to commitments made by developed countries to provide climate finance to developing countries.
Now, ECO remembers well, that time last year when developed countries finally acknowledged that they had not kept their promise to ramp up climate finance to $100bn a year by 2020. A string of new pledges was to save the day for COP26, although developed countries estimated that, with those new pledges, they would reach the $100bn level three years late – in 2023.
Or will they? Among the pledges was Germany’s promise to increase climate finance budget allocations to six billion Euros a year by 2025 at the latest. Yet, federal budget negotiations for 2022 that just concluded, provide for almost no increases over 2021 planned levels of slightly above four billion Euros, and internal drafts for the 2023 budget would, as of now, even lead to a slight decrease. So, rather than gradually increasing climate finance towards the promised level for 2025, Germany, for now, looks at stagnating climate finance levels.
To be sure, ECO would perhaps not pick on Germany, one of the larger climate finance providers, if it were not for the SB56 taking place in Germany, and, more importantly, for Germany holding this year’s G7 presidency, putting the country under special scrutiny. Yet, for now, on climate finance, the government isn’t exactly contributing to maintaining the carefully crafted trust base between developing and developed countries.
ECO would advise Germany to ensure that the 2023 budget caters for a sizeable increase in climate finance, adaptation finance in particular, to the tune of hundreds of millions of Euros over current levels. And, in a second step, even ramp up the six-billion-promise itself, by announcing, perhaps at the Petersberg Climate Dialogue, a new target of at least 8 billion Euros a year by 2025 as a much more adequate target for a wealthy country like Germany.
Alas, for those hoping this cup would pass from them: ECO is quite aware that other developed countries do not necessarily perform better. Several countries’ climate finance ‘pledges’ from last year (e.g. Australia, France, and Japan) were not even increases over past levels. ECO is also alarmed by what seems to (not) be in the pipeline for climate finance from the US – rest assured, ECO will pick on these countries another time.