World set to miss goal of $100B annual ‘vital’ climate aid pledged to poor nations

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BERLIN (AP) — A target for rich countries to provide poor nations with $100 billion in aid each year to tackle global warming will be missed, dealing a blow to the upcoming U.N. climate talks in Glasgow.

Senior officials from Britain, Canada and Germany, who had hoped to break a deadlock in negotiations ahead of next week’s summit, announced Monday that current data shows the goal won’t be reached until 2023 — three years later than agreed.

But Mohamed Adow, a long-time observer of U.N. climate talks who now heads Nairobi-based environmental think tank Power Shift Africa, said the plan won’t satisfy poor nations, who have insisted that the original target must be met.

“The $100 billion of climate finance is not only a lifeline to poor and vulnerable communities on the front line of a climate crisis they did not cause, it’s also the bare minimum that rich countries need to do to hold up their end of the bargain at COP26,” he said

Teresa Anderson, climate policy coordinator at ActionAid International, noted that much of the financial support from rich to poor countries is still made out as loans that those on the frontlines of climate change struggle to repay.

“It is vital that climate finance comes in the form of grants,” she said.

The Washington-based environmental think tank World Resources Institute has calculated that only a handful of rich countries including France, Japan, Norway, Germany and Sweden are providing a fair share of climate aid.

Based on the size of its economy and greenhouse gas emissions, the United States has fallen far short in recent years, though President Joe Biden has pledged to double U.S. climate finance contributions to $11.4 billion a year by 2024.

(Excerpt) Read more at apnews.com

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