Nearly a tenth of global climate finance could be under threat as US president Donald Trump’s aid cuts risk wiping out huge swathes of spending overseas, according to Carbon Brief analysis.
Last year, the US announced that it had increased its climate aid for developing countries roughly seven-fold over the course of Joe Biden’s presidency, reaching $11bn per year.
This likely amounts to more than 8% of all international climate finance in 2024.
However, any progress in US climate finance has been thrown into disarray by the new administration.
Trump has halted US foreign aid and threatened to cancel virtually all US Agency for International Development (USAid) projects, with climate funds identified as a prime target.
USAid has provided around a third of US climate finance in recent years, reaching nearly $3bn in 2023, according to Carbon Brief analysis.
Another $4bn of US funding for the UN Green Climate Fund (GCF) has also been cancelled by the president’s administration.
One expert tells Carbon Brief that more climate funds will likely end up on the “cutting block”.
Another warns of an “enormous gulf” to meeting the new global $300bn climate-finance goal nations agreed last year, if the US stops reporting – let alone providing – any official climate finance.
Carbon Brief’s analysis draws together available data to explain how the Trump administration’s cuts endanger global efforts to help developing countries tackle climate change.
- How much did climate finance increase under Biden?
- What are the climate impacts of cutting USAid?
- Are other sources of climate finance at risk?
- Methodology
How much did climate finance increase under Biden?
The US is by far the world’s largest economy and biggest historical emitter of carbon dioxide (CO2).
This means that, while it is the fourth-biggest national provider of international climate finance, its overall share is low relative to the nation’s wealth and responsibility for climate change. As a result, the US has long been seen as a laggard in this area.
The US provides 0.24% of its gross national income (GNI) as aid for developing countries, which includes some climate funding. This is the same share as the Czech Republic, a nation with a per-capita GNI three times smaller.
US climate-finance contributions stalled during Trump’s first four-year term as president, when other developed countries were ramping up to meet their target of providing and mobilising $100bn a year for developing countries by 2020.
A shift in focus came when Biden became president in 2021. He established an international climate finance plan to scale up US efforts, in line with US obligations under the Paris Agreement.
Biden also announced that the US would reach $11.4bn in annual climate finance by 2024.
This goal was achieved, according to “preliminary estimates” announced by the US during the COP29 climate summit at the end of 2024. These estimates, which are unlikely to be confirmed by the new administration, are shown in the chart below.
The figures are based predominantly on “bilateral” climate finance reported to the UN. They also include US finance distributed via multilateral climate funds, such as the Global Environment Facility (GEF) and the GCF.
Bilateral climate finance largely comes from aid programmes with climate benefits, such as supporting a geothermal project in the Philippines, investing in “climate-smart” agriculture in Bangladesh, or improving water security in Niger.
The US significantly increased its contribution towards climate finance during the Biden administration. Ramping up relevant US aid projects and multilateral funding helped developed countries to hit the $100bn climate-finance target – albeit two years late in 2022.
The $11bn reported by the US in 2024 would be the equivalent of 21% of all bilateral and multilateral climate fund inputs that year – up from around 4% under the previous Trump presidency. These funds are shown by the blue bars in the figure below.
(Estimates for 2023 and 2024 assume a steady rise in climate finance from sources beyond the US, as official figures beyond then have not been released. See Methodology for more information.)
Even when considering other sources of international climate finance – specifically multilateral development banks (MDBs) and “mobilised” private finance shown in grey in the figure below – the US has contributed a sizable share in recent years.
After lingering around 2% during the last Trump administration, the US share of total climate finance roughly quadrupled to more than 8% in 2024, Carbon Brief analysis suggests.
It is also worth noting that the US, as the biggest shareholder at the World Bank and a major shareholder at other MDBs, can be linked to a large portion of their finance. This contribution is not factored into official US reporting, so it has not been included in this analysis.
Even accounting for MDB contributions, US climate finance spending is still far lower than its “fair share”, based on its historical responsibility for climate change and ability to pay. Some analysts have put the US fair share as high as 40-50% of climate finance overall.
What are the climate impacts of cutting USAid?
Upon taking office for the second time in January 2025, Trump immediately took aim at international aid spending and climate action with a flurry of executive orders.
One order announced plans to withdraw the US from the Paris Agreement and criticised such treaties for “steer[ing] American taxpayer dollars to countries that do not require, or merit, financial assistance”. It also “revoked and rescinded” Biden’s international climate finance plan.
In another executive order, Trump announced a “pause” on US foreign aid “for assessment of programmatic efficiencies and consistency with US foreign policy”.
USAid handles 60% of US foreign aid – more than $43bn in 2023 – while the State Department oversees most of the remainder. Trump says he wants to “close [USAid] down” and his advisor Elon Musk has called it a “criminal organisation”.
Source: Truth Social.
Trump requires the approval of Congress to repurpose USAid funds or, indeed, abolish the agency. His administration’s actions have, therefore, been described as “illegal” and “unconstitutional” by senior Democrats and aid workers.
Yet, despite lawsuits and court orders instructing the administration to lift the pause, it has since stated its intention to eliminate more than 90% of USAid contracts and, more widely, $60bn of US foreign aid.
This would have major implications for US climate finance.
News outlets have reported on the climate-related programmes at risk, sometimes stating that USAid has funded half a billion dollars of climate programmes annually in recent years.
This figure, while based on USAid’s own reporting of its clean energy, climate adaptation and nature projects, is a significant underestimate of its total climate-finance contributions.
Carbon Brief analysis suggests that USAid contributed $2.8bn of climate finance in 2023, the latest year for which data is available. Other US departments with aid contributions in the OECD database contributed smaller sums, bringing total climate spending up to $2.9bn.
This equates to around a third of US climate finance that year. If a similar share from these departments was counted as climate finance in 2024, it would amount to nearly $4bn, Carbon Brief finds.
(These are estimates based on “climate-related” aid data reported to the OECD. See Methodology for more details.)
Climate-finance experts tell Carbon Brief that these higher figures align with the fact that many aid projects targeting other issues, such as agriculture, have climate components.
Dr Ed Carr, a centre director at Stockholm Environment Institute US who has previously worked at USAid, tells Carbon Brief:
“The way that the Biden administration was doing stuff and the way that [former president Barack] Obama before was doing stuff, [was to] start to weave a degree of climate sensitivity into everything…So, basically, a huge percentage of programmes [are] working on some aspect of climate.”
Unlike many forms of climate finance, USAid projects include lots of grant-based funding, which many developing countries view as preferable to loans and better suited to supporting climate adaptation.
Relevant projects backed by USAid in recent years include support for a food-security programme in Ethiopia, upgrading a dam in Pakistan and protecting water supplies in Peru.
The Trump administration has made it clear that “climate” is one of the issues that it is scrutinising as it assesses aid projects for consistency with what it defines as US interests. A survey sent to grant recipients several weeks after the initial executive order asks:
“Can you confirm this is not a climate or ‘environmental justice’ project or include such elements?”
Are other sources of climate finance at risk?
The remaining billions in climate finance are handled by more than a dozen organisations, distributing grants, loans, development finance and export credits.
Around $1.2bn of US climate finance in 2022 was paid into international funds, including the GEF. This amounts to a fifth of the total US climate finance that year.
The Biden administration did not release a breakdown of how much money went to these funds in 2023 and 2024. However, in 2023 the country paid out $1bn for the GCF alone.
Such funding is also at risk as the new administration pulls away from what the White House calls “international agreements and initiatives that do not reflect our country’s values”. Notably, the US has now cancelled $4bn in funds previously committed to the GCF.
(Biden and Obama pledged $3bn each to the fund. However, neither of them ever delivered more than $1bn of their pledge, leaving $4bn outstanding.)
As the chart below shows, this means the US contribution to the GCF is now lower than that of Sweden – a country with an economy 50 times smaller.
The GCF is not the only specific fund that has been targeted. The US formally ended its involvement in the UN loss and damage fund, which it pledged $17.6m towards in 2023. It has also withdrawn from the Just Energy Transition Partnership initiative, which included at least $56m in grants to help South Africa transition away from coal power.
Another Trump executive order announced a review of “international intergovernmental organisation” membership, including MDBs.
There is an assumption that the US will not give up its considerable power in these banks. However, Trump supporters, including those behind the influential Project 2025, have laid out plans for withdrawing the US from the World Bank.
A large chunk of the remaining US climate finance in recent years has come from the US International Development Finance Corporation (DFC), which committed more than $3.7bn in climate finance in 2024 and a similar amount in 2023. This included loans for a wind power project in Mozambique and a railway to carry critical minerals through Angola.
DFC is a development finance institution that invests in private enterprises and was set up under the first Trump administration. It has so far been insulated from US aid cuts and there has been speculation that it may now play a larger role in US foreign policy.
Leaning more heavily on DFC, as well as the US Export-Import Bank (EXIM), would not be suitable for climate finance, Ritu Bharadwaj, a climate-finance principal researcher at the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), tells Carbon Brief:
“If these mechanisms remain intact while grant-based finance is gutted, it signals a shift away from public, needs-based funding toward finance that prioritises US commercial and strategic interests. In other words, what little climate finance remains will likely benefit US corporations first, rather than frontline communities.”
Additionally, even if such organisations are favoured by the new administration, this does not mean their climate projects will be protected. Benjamin Black, Trump’s nominee to lead DFC, wrote a blog post about the corporation in January, stating:
“The Biden administration’s emphasis on virtue-signaling – such as dedicating 40% of [DFC’s] recent commitments to green projects – raises serious concerns.”
Carr tells Carbon Brief that more US climate spending could still end up on the “cutting block”:
“From what we’ve seen so far, it looks to me like they are going to try and root out everything that they see as clearly related to climate.”
He caveats this by noting that some of the money the Biden administration would have counted as climate finance may continue, but not be defined as such.
This highlights the importance of accounting when assessing climate finance. Different governments around the world report different things as climate finance, depending on their priorities and political leanings.
For example, during the last Trump presidency, the US stopped reporting on climate finance to the UN. When calculating progress towards the $100bn goal during this period, the OECD had to estimate US figures based on “provisional data” or averages from previous years.
The Biden administration retrospectively reported the missing data from the Trump years in 2021, resulting in the OECD scaling down a previous estimate.
Clemence Landers, a senior policy fellow at the Center for Global Development (CGD) who previously worked at the US Treasury, tells Carbon Brief that a “very educated guess [is] that there will be no reporting from the US” in the coming years.
The US government website tracking aid has not been updated since December.
If climate finance is not recorded, this could hamper its inclusion in the annual $100bn goal, which lasts until 2025, as well as the $300bn goal that countries agreed on last year at COP29 to replace it, as Landers notes:
“That does leave an enormous gulf in terms of the new global climate-finance target.”
Methodology
Climate-finance reporting practices mean that official data can be difficult to analyse in detail.
In this article, annual US climate-finance figures for the period 2015-2022 are based on those reported by the US government to the UN in biennial reports (BRs) and, for the years 2021 and 2022, its first biennial transparency report (BTR).
These can be considered “official” climate-finance figures. They align with the figures that the US federal government has released and are the ones used to inform the OECD’s assessments of developed countries’ progress towards the $100bn annual target.
The figures only include bilateral climate finance and inputs into multilateral climate funds. MDB shares and private finance mobilised are not covered. Again, this aligns with the “climate-finance” totals quoted in progress reports by the Biden administration.
The climate-finance totals for 2023 and 2024 are based on releases from the US Department of State during the Biden administration. These figures are for the US financial year (FY), which runs from 1 October to 30 September. However, the FY figures are the same as the calendar year numbers reported to the UN for 2021 and 2022, so Carbon Brief assumes the same is true for 2023 and 2024.
Due to the significant time lag in official reporting to the UN, the figures underpinning these totals are not due to be released until 2026. (The previous Trump administration did not report them at all and it is unlikely that the current one will either, now that the US has announced its departure from the Paris Agreement.)
Given this time lag, estimates for total international climate finance in 2023 and 2024 are derived from a joint analysis by the thinktanks Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), ODI, Germanwatch and ECCO. This calculated likely totals in 2030, based on existing pledges and planned reforms. Carbon Brief assumes a steady trajectory to the overall $197bn estimated under the thinktanks’ “business-as-usual” scenario, with bilateral finance, specifically, reaching $50bn by 2025.
Climate-finance figures reported to the UN by the US do not include details of the government departments and agencies responsible, making it difficult to determine the share overseen by USAid. The Biden administration also did not report the breakdown between agencies.
This data is reported to the OECD Creditor Reporting System (CRS), which contains figures up to 2023. However, the information in the CRS is not “official” climate finance, but rather “climate-related development finance”, identified as such using Rio Markers. Most countries apply simple coefficients to convert the figures they report to the CRS into their climate-finance submissions to the UN, but the US calculates its climate-finance submissions separately.
Nevertheless, to obtain approximate figures, Carbon Brief has assumed that 100% of CRS projects marked as “principal” climate projects and 50% of the projects marked as “significant”, are climate finance. This aligns with a methodology used by other organisations, such as Oxfam, as well as other nations, including Germany, Japan and Denmark.
However, it is only a rough estimate. Experts that Carbon Brief consulted stressed the uncertainties of climate finance reporting and said the numbers could be higher or lower.
The post Analysis: Nearly a tenth of global climate finance threatened by Trump aid cuts appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Analysis: Nearly a tenth of global climate finance threatened by Trump aid cuts
The head of the United Nations has called on all countries to deliver plans for phasing out their production and consumption of fossil fuels, as rising oil prices and climate shocks threaten energy and human security.
In his farewell speech to the UN General Assembly (UNGA) in New York on Tuesday, outgoing UN Secretary-General António Guterres for the first time urged “every government to adopt a national plan to transition away from fossil fuels” aligned with limiting warming to 1.5C. The plans, he said, should include “clear timelines and protection for affected workers and communities”.
“We know fossil fuel interests won’t step aside on their own. For decades, Big Oil has treated the atmosphere as an open sewer – and cashed in on the consequences,” Guterres told diplomats in his speech opening the leaders’ segment of the assembly, also calling out the industry’s windfall profits after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
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COP31 electrification pledge leaves out clean power commitment
Campaigners and experts say the goal’s effectiveness in reducing emissions may be limited unless countries agree to meet it using only clean energy -
Climate change and energy transition rise up national security agenda
Leaders highlighted the national security risks posed by global warming and fossil fuel dependency at New York Climate Week
At last year’s COP30 climate summit in Belém, a group of about 80 governments led a failed push to develop a global roadmap to transition away from fossil fuels. Brazil instead proposed to draft a voluntary report that will be presented this year ahead of COP31 after countries and organisations submitted their views to the process.
Governments first agreed to transition away from fossil fuels in energy systems at COP28 in Dubai in 2023, but have since failed to agree at UN climate talks on how to move forward with that commitment, as efforts to do so have been effectively blocked by large fossil fuel-producing countries.
France, Netherlands issue plans
A few countries have moved forward with their own transition plans. France launched the first one at an international conference on the issue in April and the Netherlands followed suit this month. Not being major fossil fuel producers, both European nations aim to end their coal, oil and gas consumption by 2050, although the Dutch plan was criticised for not setting specific phase-out dates for the dirty fuels.
Adão Soares Barbosa, climate ambassador from Timor-Leste and chair of the Least Developed Countries (LDC) group in the UN climate negotiations, told a press briefing on Tuesday that last year’s discussions on shifting away from fossil fuels need to continue at COP31, adding that developed countries should lead the way with transition plans and curb their use of fossil fuels.
“We are expecting that we can make a request to major-emitting countries to limit emissions from this sector,” he said. “For LDCs, we’ll also try to reduce fossil fuel use, but it will depend on national circumstances.”
Samoa’s lead negotiator Anna Rasmussen said small island states have outlined their energy transition plans in their nationally determined contributions (NDCs) – countries’ plans for meeting the Paris Agreement goals – but added “we’re still waiting” for climate finance to help implement those plans.
Despite the global push to clean up the energy mix, countries leading climate talks are themselves also expanding fossil fuel production. COP31 co-presidents Australia and Türkiye have both recently given the green light to mine and drill more coal, oil and gas, and still depend on fossil fuels for 60% and 56% of their electricity production respectively.
Fossil fuel expansion threatens COP31 hosts’ credibility, experts warn
COP30 host nation Brazil has also persisted with its plans to explore potential new oil reserves near the mouth of the Amazon River – a region known as the Equatorial Margin.
These are moving ahead despite President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva announcing last year at the Belém climate summit that the country would develop its own fossil fuel phase-out plan. This is still under development with little information about its progress and may be hampered by elections next month.
“We have achieved our self sufficiency in oil and will continue to explore the potential of new reserves, such as those in the Equatorial Margin,” Lula said in his speech to the UNGA on Tuesday. “But we will not abandon the environmental agenda,” he insisted. “We will move forward with the roadmap for the decarbonisation of the Brazilian economy.”
Transition far cheaper than status quo
Speaking at the main Climate Week NYC venue, Mads Christensen, executive director of Greenpeace International, said given the fast-shifting cost dynamics for both fossil fuels and renewables, countries should revise their existing energy plans because they are now out of date.
Gas power generation now costs around 150 euros per megawatt compared with around 50 euros for solar with battery storage – making the latter two-thirds cheaper.
“If these plans were updated, I think we would have a much faster transition because it simply makes good financial sense,” he said.
Tzeporah Berman, founder and chair of the Fossil Fuel Treaty Initiative, told Climate Home News that the Santa Marta process for transitioning away from fossil fuels (TAFF), launched at April’s conference, could help countries discuss, design and develop their national roadmaps, as well as mobilise the international cooperation required to actually deliver them.
“Many countries want not only national roadmaps but a global roadmap off the highway to hell,” she added. “A global plan is necessary to ensure the rules aren’t rigged against those who want to do the right thing and so all countries can make credible commitments.”
The second TAFF conference will be held in the Pacific island nation of Tuvalu next spring, co-chaired by Ireland. In New York, Tuvalu’s climate minister Maina Vakafua Talia called for stepped-up efforts to tackle the fossil fuel use that is threatening his country’s “demise” by driving global warming.
“The world is running out of time, and so I ask every government to come to… Tuvalu with solutions – real solutions, not false solutions – for us to ensure that we have a pathway and a way forward,” he urged.
The post UN chief urges countries to adopt fossil fuel transition plans with timelines appeared first on Climate Home News.
UN chief urges countries to adopt fossil fuel transition plans with timelines
COP31’s flagship initiative to accelerate the electrification of the world’s economy has been criticised for failing to include a commitment to produce the power from clean energy.
Governments that sign the voluntary pledge at this year’s UN climate summit will commit to increasing electricity’s share of total energy consumption to 35% globally by 2035 in line “with pathways consistent with keeping 1.5C alive”, the text unveiled by the Turkish presidency on Tuesday says.
While the document says that the electrification goal is “complementary to efforts to expand renewable energy and improve energy efficiency”, governments are not explicitly asked to commit to producing the extra power with clean sources and driving down greenhouse gas emissions.
The text instead says the “use of clean electricity” will vary according to national circumstances. Fossil fuels are not mentioned by name, although the pledge cites the COP28 Global Stocktake decision, which called for “transitioning away from fossil fuels” in energy systems.
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Climate change and energy transition rise up national security agenda
Leaders highlighted the national security risks posed by global warming and fossil fuel dependency at New York Climate Week -
Fossil fuel expansion threatens COP31 hosts’ credibility, experts warn
Türkiye and Australia are pushing coal, oil and gas at home with no national timeline for their own fossil fuel phase-out
COP31 president Murat Kurum said earlier this month that the push to make electrification more “widespread” – through measures like the rollout of electric vehicles and heat pumps – will “automatically” lead to a reduction in the use of fossil fuels.
But many campaigners disagree, criticising the proposed pledge for failing to give an explicit signal on the fossil fuel transition.
Lack of clarity on energy sources
“Let’s not let electrification become the Trojan horse of our times, used to hide new fossil fuel consumption rather than promote renewable energy,” Claire Smith from civil society umbrella group Beyond Fossil Fuels said in reaction to the pledge’s publication.
She added that the commitment will only help address the climate crisis if electrification is powered by a flexible energy system where solar and wind are complemented by enhanced grids and storage.
The pledge’s text says that the electricity goal should be supported by “diverse and sustainable energy sources”, but it stops short of explaining what these sources are.
Alden Meyer, an international climate policy expert and senior associate at think-tank E3G, said the details of the pledge matter to how effective it will be in helping bring planet-heating emissions down.
“It has to be clean, and we haven’t got enough clarity on a guarantee that it will be a decarbonisation move,” he told Climate Home News.
China’s industrial engine starts to break its fossil fuel habit
According to an annual electricity review from energy think-tank Ember, in 2025 renewables edged ahead of coal power for the first time in 100 years. Continued growth in solar and wind pushed the share of renewables above a third of global electricity generation to just under 34%, compared with coal at 33%, it said.
Janet Milongo, energy Transition lead at CAN International, said success cannot be measured simply by how much of the world’s final energy consumption becomes electric.
“We must ask what generates that electricity, who has access to it, who owns the infrastructure, and whether it is helping communities transition away from fossil fuels,” she added.
Electrification alone can’t meet climate goals
Analysis published by the IEA on Tuesday, alongside the pledge, found that it would already be cost-effective to raise electricity’s share of global energy use from 23% today to around 33% with existing technologies, putting the COP31 goal “within striking distance”. Based on current policies, however, the share reaches only about 30% by 2035.
Hitting the 35% target would cut fossil fuel importers’ import bills by around $400 billion a year by 2035, the IEA said. At the higher prices caused by the conflict in the Middle East, that saving rises to more than $500 billion.
Speaking at New York Climate Week on Tuesday, IEA executive director Fatih Birol said the agency’s figures show that in 2026, about 80% of all new power plants built will run on renewables, with a few percentage points coming from nuclear power and the rest from fossils fuels. “So therefore, electrification itself will lead reduction of the [greenhouse gas] emissions,” he added.
However, the IEA warned in its new report that electrification “by itself is not enough” to meet the world’s climate targets. It noted that, if “low-emission” sources of power continue to simply grow in line with current policy scenarios, that would be only just enough to cover the extra demand from electrification, driving a modest decline in emissions.
Matt Webb, associate director of global clean power diplomacy at E3G, said the pledge is a “welcome signal of leadership” and can help COP31 be a “critical moment” for countries to double down on the energy commitments made at COP28.
But to secure the full benefits of electrification, he added, it is essential that we “urgently clean up” by speeding up the rollout of renewables and developing credible national plans to transition away from fossil fuels.
The post COP31 electrification pledge leaves out clean power commitment appeared first on Climate Home News.
COP31 electrification pledge leaves out clean power commitment
People around the world have donated almost $90 million to a government-led campaign to help Nepal recover from its recent devastating Himalayan flood, according to a Nepali climate negotiator, even as the UN chief slammed the tiny amount of money in a new fund to deal with such disasters.
Individuals and companies from Nepal and abroad have chipped in from $5 to “many millions” of dollars to the Prime Minister’s Disaster Relief Fund, Manjeet Dhakal, an advisor to the poorest countries at UN climate talks, told an event on Monday focused on early warning systems.
The prompt and substantial response from the public contrasts with the slower, more limited support that is potentially on offer from the UN’s new Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage (FRLD), set up by governments to compensate developing countries for climate disasters.
Comment: Human security relies on adapting to the world’s new climate reality
Over three weeks have passed since Nepal’s finance and environment ministers asked the FRLD board to take an urgent decision to allocate funding to help Nepal protect people and restore essential services in the wake of the disaster, which caused around 1,450 deaths and left more than 5,000 people missing.
“Time is of the essence,” the ministers wrote in an appeal to the FRLD on August 31, which was swiftly followed by a letter from a group of developing-country board members urging the FRLD board’s co-chairs to organise an extraordinary meeting to come up with a response.
Loss and damage fund hesitates
Yet, despite informal online meetings, the co-chairs have yet to convene a meeting with the power to allocate funds. The board’s next scheduled meeting begins on December 15.
Dhakal said on Monday that the request has “received some positive response, but still there is some discussion ongoing about how to respond to that”.
“If they can’t respond in a timely manner, then is [the fund] fit for purpose in terms of disasters that the world would be facing in the coming years? The scale and intensity of these disasters is increasing,” he said.
With just $820 million pledged to it by rich countries and not all of that yet delivered, the FRLD has earmarked just $350 million to spend in its initial phase and without further contributions could run out of money next year.
Because of these limited funds, and a huge number of requests for funding totalling nearly $3 billion, the FRLD has said it will only give out a maximum of $20 million to each project for now. It has yet to approve funding for any projects.
Dhakal recently told The Nation magazine that this amount was just a “symbolic gesture”. Nepal’s government has estimated the costs of recovery and reconstruction at $4.8 billion, with homes, roads, bridges, hospitals and hydropower stations in the affected area needing to be repaired and rebuilt.
“Ridiculously small” funding
In a speech to the UN General Assembly on Tuesday, the body’s outgoing Secretary-General António Guterres criticised the “ridiculously small” level of funds made available by wealthy governments to the FRLD. Developed countries should “make the loss and damage fund work at scale”, he said.
The Portuguese diplomat told world leaders that when he travelled to Nepal three years ago, he had “sounded the alarm on accelerating glacier melt, warning that the rooftops of the world are caving in”.
“Some dismissed it all as overstating dangers, but as tragic events have shown, impacts are arriving sooner, hitting harder, and spreading further than many anticipated,” he said.
A recent study by scientists with the World Weather Attribution group found that climate change contributed to the rock-ice avalanche which sparked a huge flash flood along a river valley on the Nepal-Tibet border.
Speaking at a separate event in New York on Monday, leading climate scientist Johan Rockström highlighted those findings on the role of global warming in the Himalayan disaster.
“This will be potentially the first poster-child case of a loss and damage invoice, because here we have a proven case of a catastrophe which would not have occurred if it hadn’t been for human-caused climate change,” he said.
The post As loss and damage fund stalls, Nepal crowdfunds flood relief appeared first on Climate Home News.
As loss and damage fund stalls, Nepal crowdfunds flood relief
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