Climate Finance Hypocrisy
There’s enough money to support low- and middle-income countries’ climate needs. But rich countries are instead spending it on things that harm the climate.
Fossil fuel subsidies help support an already highly profitable oil and gas industry. That disproportionately harms the very countries climate finance is intended to help — which harms everyone on a climate-vulnerable planet.
Leaders are gathering at this year’s COP to agree to a new international climate finance goal. They should commit to invest what’s needed to meet the climate needs of climate-vulnerable countries now. Otherwise, we will all pay far greater consequences in the future.
In 2009, both the G8 and G20 pledged to cut fossil fuel subsidies. It’s a commitment they and other countries have reiterated at least five times, including in the Sustainable Development Goals (target 12c) and at COP26, COP27, and COP28.
Many rich countries also agreed in 2009 to provide US$100 billion per year in climate finance to developing countries by 2020. Whilst they claimed to have reached that target – albeit it two years late – that money pales in comparison to the huge sums they’ve since spent on fossil fuel subsidies at home.
