Tuesday, 27 November 2018

India, China, Brazil, and South Africa want rich nations to fulfil climate finance commitments


In the context of the UNFCCC Meeting to be held in December 2018, the Environment Ministers and climate negotiators of India, China, Brazil, and South Africa met in New Delhi on November 20, 2018 to work out their common approach. Since 2009, these four countries have a lobby group named BASIC to do collective bargaining with the developed countries during climate talks.

At the end of the meeting, the four countries issued a joint statement calling upon the developed countries to fulfil their climate finance commitments (made at the 2015 Paris Summit) of mobilizing US$100 billion per year by 2020. They said that public finance is the fulcrum of climate ambitions of the developing countries.

The commitment of US$100 billion per year has not been met by the developed countries. The OECD countries claim to have contributed US$64 billion so far, but even this figure is not correct since it is a part of the general aid from OECD. The contribution for climate projects was supposed to be over and above the normal aid for poverty alleviation and other such measures.

The richer countries did contribute US$12 billion to the Green Climate Change, out of which India received US$108 million for two projects:
·      US$39 million for water and renewable energy projects in Odisha
·      US$69 million for adaptation of coastal areas to climate change

Union Environment Minister Harsh Vardhan said, “On the ground there is not much development on providing finance… The developed countries should not only make urgent efforts to honour their commitments but also progressively and substantially scale up their financial support in the post-2020 period.”

The Conference of Parties (COP 24) of UNFCCC will be held in Katowice, Poland, from 2nd to 14th December 2018. COP 24 will try to agree on a Rule Book that will specify how countries will agree to take forward commitments (on finances, in particular) made as a part of the 2015 Paris Agreement.

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