JOIN USClimate change: India asks for money from rich nations
With just about 12 billion dollar in the kitty out of the rich nations' 2015 promise of $ 100 billion per year, India along with China, Brazil and South Africa on Tuesday made it clear that flow of finance would be the foremost issue for discussion at the UN Climate Conference at Katowice that will kick start at the Polish city on December 3.
The four emerging economies asked the developed countries to “fulfil their climate finance commitments of mobilising $100 billion per year by 2020” because “public finance is the fulcrum of enhanced climate ambition by the developing countries.”
Since 2009, the four nations formed a lobby group named BASIC (Brazil-South Africa-India-China) to put forward a collective view in climate talks dominated by the industrialised world.
The commitment of $100 billion per year was made by the developed world at Paris in 2015 when a historic agreement was inked by the entire world to save the Earth from the dangerous consequences of global warming.
But in the past three years, the fund flow from the rich nations remains low. With the USA under Donald Trump withdrawing from the Paris agreement, the future too appears bleak.
The rich nations — OECD countries — claimed to have contributed $64 billion so far as a part of the climate financing pledge, such claims are doubted in the developing world.
“The only quantifiable additional funding is the $12 billion in the Green Climate Fund, out of which India received just about $ 108 million in two projects,” one of India's climate change negotiators told DH.
The two projects — $39 million scheme on the water scarcity and renewable energy needs of Odisha, and $69 million plan on how the coastal areas are adapting to climate changes.
“The $64 billion claims are not acceptable to the developing countries because they have a different understanding of the issue and our calculations are different,” said Xie Zhenhua, Special Representative for Climate Change Affairs of China.
“Our positions are clear — the climate change funding would be above and over the existing funding. But the OECD nations making double counting in their calculation and even include funding for poverty alleviation under climate change finance. That's not acceptable,” said an environment ministry official.
“Developed countries are far from realising their climate finance commitment of mobilising $100 billion per year by 2020. They should not only make urgent efforts to honour this commitment but also progressively and substantially scale up their financial support in the post-2020 period,” said Union Environment Minister Harsh Vardhan.