Rich countries met $100bn climate goal two years late, OECD says

Stay informed with free updates

Simply sign up to the Climate change myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.

Rich countries finally met their goal to deliver $100bn in climate finance to poorer nations in 2022, two years later than promised, the OECD said, a goal that proved to be a flash point in global negotiations.

Wealthy nations first made the pledge to help developing nations cut emissions and adapt to climate change at the Copenhagen summit in 2009.

The amount became frequently invoked as prime evidence of inaction and indifference by wealthier nations for the fate of those more vulnerable to the effects of global warming. The top 20 economies have contributed more than 80 per cent of the greenhouse gases behind climate change.

Those developed nations provided just under $116bn in 2022 to reach their annual collective goal for the first time, the OECD said.

Global climate finance of an estimated $9tn a year is needed by 2030, according to a report last year from the Climate Policy Initiative, to limit the rise in average global temperature in line with the Paris agreement ideal goal of 1.5C and no more than 2C.

Over the past decade, public flows have driven most of the growth in climate-related transfers to poorer countries, the OECD said.

Public climate finance, which takes the form of government aid or multilateral development bank finance, almost doubled between 2013 and 2021, from $38bn to $73.1bn in total. By comparison, the OECD said, private climate finance remained “stubbornly low” at just $14.4bn in 2021.

The delay in reporting of the totals stems from complications in verification and compilation of the global data.

Climate policymakers and negotiators have been pushing to set a new goal when they meet again at the UN COP29 climate summit in Azerbaijan in November this year, with preliminary talks starting in Bonn next week.

At the UN COP28 climate summit in Dubai in December, countries committed to a separate loss and damage fund to help poorer nations after much wrangling about its structure, raising almost $700mn in seed capital.

It was agreed that the World Bank would host the fund, but its president Ajay Banga said at the time that it would require a period of technical assessment and consultation before any funds could be distributed.

The US, the leading shareholder in the World Bank, has pushed for countries that have been classed as developing nations, such as China and Saudi Arabia, to make contributions based on the advance of their economies. The world’s biggest polluters per capita are led by the US, followed by China, then the EU.