{"id":10161,"date":"2024-11-14T15:03:50","date_gmt":"2024-11-14T15:03:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/2024\/11\/14\/battle-lines-drawn-on-new-climate-fund-despite-shot-in-the-arm-cash-injection-at-cop29\/"},"modified":"2024-11-14T15:03:50","modified_gmt":"2024-11-14T15:03:50","slug":"battle-lines-drawn-on-new-climate-fund-despite-shot-in-the-arm-cash-injection-at-cop29","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/2024\/11\/14\/battle-lines-drawn-on-new-climate-fund-despite-shot-in-the-arm-cash-injection-at-cop29\/","title":{"rendered":"Battle lines drawn on new climate fund despite \u2018shot in the arm\u2019 cash injection at COP29"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Battle lines have been drawn between the almost 200 countries meeting in Azerbaijan as they seek to agree a new pot of money to help developing countries cope with climate change.<\/p>\n<p>Over the last two days, <strong>leaders have swanned to the capital Baku<\/strong> for the <strong>COP29<\/strong> climate summit to give glitzy speeches on how much they are doing and how everyone else needs to do more.<\/p>\n<div class=\"sdc-site-outbrain sdc-site-outbrain--AR_6\" aria-hidden=\"true\" data-component-name=\"sdc-site-outbrain\" data-target=\"\" data-widget-mapping=\"\" data-installation-keys=\"\">    <\/div>\n<p>Meanwhile, their negotiators dug in for a battle over the new fund of so-called &#8220;climate finance&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>This is cash that rich, polluting countries pay to developing nations to help them both ditch fossil fuels &#8211; the main cause of climate change &#8211; and cope with the impacts of burning them such as heavier rains, deeper drought and harsher heat.<\/p>\n<p>Developed countries including those in the EU and <strong>US<\/strong> are leading a push to get more countries to pay into the fund including <strong>China<\/strong>, Qatar and South Korea, which were once classed as developing, but whose wealth and emissions have now grown.<\/p>\n<div class=\"ad ad--teads\">        <\/div>\n<p>But that is not going down well with the likes of China, which already provides this money in other forms, and where emissions and wealth per person remain much lower.<\/p>\n<p>And some poor nations fear the plan to add more donors is a ploy to dilute responsibility, and won&#8217;t amount to more money in the piggy bank.<\/p>\n<p>How big that piggy bank should be is shaping up to be one of the hardest things to agree on.<\/p>\n<p>Most accept the amount of money developing countries need to pay for their solar and wind farms, flood defences and hardy crops is about $1trn a year.<\/p>\n<p>But back in Europe, the US and Australia, governments are dealing with tight public finances, shrinking aid budgets and some backlash to climate action.<\/p>\n<p>That makes it hard to see how they can cobble together $1trn &#8211; at the moment it&#8217;s about $125bn.<\/p>\n<p>Former Maldives president Mohamed Nasheed said $1trn is &#8220;a big number&#8221;, but added they are &#8220;not suggesting that it should just come from European taxpayers&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>There are many &#8220;means and ways of raising these funds&#8221; including from the private sector and international banks,&#8221; he added.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;So it&#8217;s I think given the gravity of the matter, this is not a big amount.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Emmanuel Urey-Yarkpawolo, head of Liberia&#8217;s Environmental Protection Agency, said rich countries need to step up because &#8220;their development came through the burning of fossil fuels&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Only about a quarter of Liberians have electricity. To get it, he asked &#8220;do we go to coal? Do we go to fossil fuels? Do we go to renewable energy? The answer is clearly yes, let&#8217;s move to renewable energy.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>But it will cost about $1bn, he said, as clean power often costs more upfront than fossil fuel power projects. &#8220;So public money to help Liberia adapt, to move quickly to renewable energy like that, it becomes very important.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Liberia is part of a group of 45 &#8220;least developed&#8221; countries that negotiate together. They say the new fund should set aside $220bn for them, while small island developing countries argue for their own dedicated pot of $39bn.<\/p>\n<p>The money comes from lots of different sources, including countries&#8217; overseas aid budgets, and money that development banks can drum up.<\/p>\n<p>The discussions, which still have two weeks to go, got a boost yesterday when a group of lenders, including the World Bank, said they thought they could get $120bn flowing by 2030, a roughly 60% increase on the amount in 2023.<\/p>\n<p>Patrick Verkooijen, CEO of the Global Center on Adaptation, welcomed the announcement as &#8220;a shot in the arm for the climate finance discussion&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;But there is so much more work ahead,&#8221; he added.<\/p>\n<p>A fairly new part of the debate is whether more public money can be generated by taxing polluting industries such as fossil fuel production, flying and shipping.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<div>This post appeared first on sky.com<\/div>\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Battle lines have been drawn between the almost 200 countries meeting in Azerbaijan as they&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10162,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10161","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10161","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10161"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10161\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10162"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10161"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}