Developing countries have reacted angrily to an offer of $250bn a year in finance from the rich world – considerably less than they are demanding – to help them tackle the climate crisis.
He said $250bn divided among all the developing countries in need amounted to very little. “It comes to nothing when you split it. We have bills in the billions to pay after droughts and flooding. What the heck will $250bn do? It won’t put us on a path to 1.5C. More like 3C.” Poor nations wanted much more of the headline finance to come directly from rich countries, preferably in the form of grants rather than loans.Mohamed Adow, a co-founder of Power Shift Africa, a thinktank, said: “Our expectations were low, but this is a slap in the face. No developing country will fall for this. It’s not clear what kind of trick the presidency is trying to pull. They’ve already disappointed everyone, but they have now angered and offended the developing world.
The offer from developed countries, funded from their national budgets and overseas aid, is supposed to form the inner core of a, accompanied by a middle layer of new forms of finance such as new taxes on fossil fuels and high-carbon activities, carbon trading and “innovative” forms of finance; and an outermost layer of investment from the private sector, into projects such as solar and windfarms.