UN climate chief calls for $100bn green investment
UN officials pledge sum of $100bn to help developing countries adapt to the effects of climate change
According to the UN’s top climate change official, an international target to provide US$100 billion each year by 2020 to help developing countries adapt to the impacts of climate change is far from the amount that is needed to achieve a global clean revolution.
Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change tells journalists and the UN climate talks in Lima that “$100 billion is frankly a very, very small sum”.
It is expected for $90 trillion to be invested in infrastructure over the course of the next 15 years.
Christiana Figueres adds “We are talking here about trillions of dollars that need to flow into the transformation at a global level. “The world needs to decide: Are those $90 trillion going to go into clean technology, clean infrastructure, and above all resilient infrastructure, or is it going to go into the technologies and infrastructure of the last century?”
As finance is essential in building trust between the richer and developing nations, the two-week negotiations at Peru put climate finance in the spotlight, while developing countries press for clarity on how to guide funding up to $100bn level that the governments committed to in 2009.
A voluntary agreement was made at the 2009 Summit in Copenhagen. They concluded that the finance should come from “a wide variety of sources”, such as private funds, bilateral and multilateral funds and other “alternative” sources of finance.
However, there is little understanding of how much funding is flowing, what kind, and from where to where, which has hindered a clearer pathway.
On the other hand, according to the UN Climate Change secretariat the financial flow for emission reductions and adaptation within countries as well as via international support ranged from $40 to $175 billion a year between 2010 and 2012.
This includes an annual flow of $35-50 billion through public institutions, and $5-$125 billion of private finance. As a result this could present opportunities of meeting the $100bn goal which was previously discouraged.
Christiana Figueres still urges that countries need to agree on what part of the climate finance flows identified in the report could be counted towards the $100 billion. She said governments at least have numbers they can work with now, which should help “puncture many myths”.
Figueres described the $100 billion as a “numerical proxy” for developing countries to trust that funding for their climate change activities is progressing.
