“…I remember, how we used to sleep/ In the government yard in Trenchtown/ Oba observing the hypocrites/mingle with the good people we met/Good friends we’ve had/good friends we’ve lost/along the way/In this great future/you can’t forget your past/So dry your tears, I say…”
Bob Marley and the Wailers
As I look over my first impressions of COP28, I am really taken aback by how my first impressions are the same as how I left and in the week that has followed being back in the US: awesome and heartbreaking.
My thoughts and feelings have ranged over this week–a lot of reflection of my younger days spent on the streets, on college campuses, at many capitals and in front of federal, state and municipal buildings raising my fist, raising my voice, raising resistance. As these memories flood back, the anxiety of wanting change now rushes over me; the discontent of unsubstantial change stabs in my heart. These feelings are the effects of historical racial trauma, and ultimately what was reflected back to me during COP28 from people all around the world.
What has since layered on and infused with those initial feelings is the awesome: pure love and admiration for how people from the poorest countries of the world held themselves with resilience, knowledge, beauty, grace and agency in demanding from Western countries their equitable share in fixing the impacts of climate injustice for continued survival.
Reparations for the years of resource and labor theft is the way to clear a path for solutions, yet even at the UN’s Conference of the Parties where the realities of climate change are discussed openly, the topic of how we got here–the history that is desired to be forgotten, but what we cannot lose–is elusive. Reparations is still a dirty word, largely because the US refuses to provide any significant funding in the loss and damage fund. And that is because the US does not support reparations–a blatant way to side-step broken treaties and the 40 acres and a mule once promised and never delivered.
Paying into a world fund designated to help the poorest nations of the world whose land and resources were taken by Western colonialists would be an admission of guilt to what happened and happens on our soil. The US does not want to open that door, and that is the heartbreak: as a supposed world leader, if we began that process we might begin to heal as a nation and we might actually lead on the moral highway for the rest of the world. I shed no tears today. I stand as I always have with my fist held high, in the background and one among the many doing the work as it needs to be done in search of our great future.
Denise is the Senior Director of Development and Marketing at Climate Generation. Denise leads fundraising and marketing efforts, supporting Climate Generation’s team in growing resources to amplify our mission and vision. Denise has a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of St. Catherine, and has worked in fundraising and development for 17 years. She has served as the founding chair of the Saint Paul Almanac, as director for the Lex/Ham Community Council, and on the Central Corridor Community Advisory Committee. Denise’s passion is fueling transformative work through collaborative processes, and has worked in early childhood development, employment and health and human services. While new to working directly on environmental issues, Denise has seen the first hand effect of environmental disparity in communities where she has lived and believes that radical, lasting change in who we are as a people will come from uniting around practical and expedient action to restore and nourish the environment.
Denise is a Climate Generation Window Into COP delegate for COP28. To learn more, we encourage you to meet the full delegation and subscribe to the Window Into COP digest.
The post Final Reflections from COP28 appeared first on Climate Generation.
Months after a collapsed pipe pushed nearly 250 million gallons of raw sewage into the river, residents say the area still smells.
Members of a congressional subcommittee this week questioned utility leaders and state officials about their knowledge of preexisting problems with the sewage line that collapsed on Jan. 19 near the Potomac River.
Congress Grills Officials About the Potomac River Sewage Spill
A formal petition to the U.S. government calls for sanctions on Chinese seafood imports as it highlights China’s loophole-ridden illegal shark fin trade.
For migrant workers trapped onboard Chinese distant water fishing fleets, cutting the fins off sharks as they writhe violently on rusted decks in the Indian Ocean isn’t accidental. It’s an intentional and lucrative act that marks the start of a bloody half-a-billion-dollar offshore supply chain, tacitly supported by Beijing yet covertly concealed from port inspectors globally.
New data on international climate finance for 2023 and 2024 suggests that wealthy countries are highly unlikely to have met their pledge to double funding for adaptation in developing nations to around $40 billion a year by 2025 amid cuts to their overseas aid budgets.
At the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow in 2021, all countries agreed to “urge” developed nations to at least double their funding for adaptation in developing countries from 2019 levels of around $20 billion by 2025. Funding for adaptation has lagged behind money to help reduce emissions and remains the dark spot even as the data showed overall climate finance rose to a record $136.7 billion in 2024.
A United Nations Environment Programme report warned last year that wealthy nations were likely to miss the adaptation finance target and the data released on Thursday by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) shows that in 2024 adaptation finance was just under $35 billion.
The OECD, an intergovernmental policy forum for wealthy countries, said the increase between 2022 and 2024 was “modest”, adding that meeting the doubling target would require “strong growth” of close to 20% in 2025.
More cuts likely
The OECD’s figures do not go up to 2025, but several nations announced cuts to climate finance last year. The most notable was the abandonment of US pledges to international climate funds by the new Trump administration but the UK, France, Germany and other wealthy European countries also pared back their contributions.
Joe Thwaites, international finance director at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said developed countries were “not on track” to meet the adaptation funding goal.
Power Shift Africa director Mohamed Adow said adaptation finance is needed to expand flood defences, drought-resistant crops, early warning systems and resilient health services as the world warms, bringing more extreme weather and rising seas. “When that money fails to arrive, people lose homes, harvests and livelihoods – and in the worst cases, their lives,” he warned.
Imane Saidi, a senior researcher at the North Africa-based Imal Initiative, called the $35 billion in adaptation finance in 2024 “a drop in the ocean”, considering that the United Nations estimates the annual adaptation needs of developing countries at between $215 billion and $387 billion.
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UN General Assembly backs “climate obligations” set by world’s top court
A UN resolution endorses a landmark climate ruling by the International Court of Justice that states should reduce fossil fuels and repair the damage from global warming -
Electrification emerges as COP31 priority
The Turkish COP31 President has called for “a truly global conversation” about shifting the global energy system from fossil fuels to electricity -
UK halves Green Climate Fund contribution, as it spends more on security
After promising £1.6 billion to the UN’s flagship climate fund in 2023, the UK government has now said it will only hand over half as much
If confirmed, a failure to meet the goal is likely to further strain relations between developed and developing countries within the UN climate process. A previous pledge to provide $100 billion a year of total climate finance by 2020 was only met two years late, a failure labelled “dismal” by the UAE’s COP28 President Sultan Al Jaber and many other Global South diplomats.
Missing that goal would also raise doubts about donor governments’ commitment to meeting their new post-2025 adaptation finance goal. At COP30 last year, governments agreed to urge developed countries to triple adaptation finance – without defining the baseline – by 2035.
African and other developing countries have pointed to lack of funding as a key flaw in ongoing attempts to set indicators to measure progress on adapting to climate change.
Speaking to climate ministers from around the world in Copenhagen on Wednesday, Turkish COP31 President Murat Kurum stressed the importance of climate finance. “It is easy to say we support global climate action,” he said, “but promises must be kept.”
He said the COP31 Presidency will use the new Global Implementation Accelerator and recommendations in the Baku-to-Belem roadmap, published last year, to scale up climate finance – and will hold donors accountable for their collective finance goals.
He noted that developed countries should this year submit their first reports showing how they will deliver their “fair share” of the new broader finance goal set at COP29 in 2024, to deliver $300 billion a year in climate finance by 2035. They are due to report on this once every two years.
Broader climate finance
The OECD data shows that the overall amount of climate finance – including funding for emissions cuts – provided by developed countries grew fast in 2023 before declining in 2024. In contrast, the amount of private finance developed countries say they “mobilised” increased in both 2023 and 2024, pushing the top-line figure to a record high.
While the OECD does not say which countries provided what amounts, data from the ODI Global think-tank suggests that the 2024 cuts to bilateral climate finance were spread broadly among wealthy nations.
Thwaites of NRDC welcomed the fact that overall climate finance provided and mobilised by developed countries exceeded $130 billion in both 2023 and 2024. He said that this was “well above earlier projections” and “shows that when rich countries work together, they can over-achieve on climate finance goals”.
But Sehr Raheja, programme officer at the Delhi-based Centre for Science and Environment, said these figures are “modest” when set against the new $300-billion goal.
“While the headline total figure of climate finance remains alright,” she said, “declining bilateral climate spending raises important questions about the predictability of high-quality, concessional public finance, which has consistently been a key demand of the Global South.”
She also lamented that loans continue to dominate public climate finance and that mobilised private finance is concentrated in middle-income countries and on emissions-reduction measures rather than adaptation projects. “Private capital continues to follow bankability rather than climate vulnerability or need,” she added.
Ritu Bharadwaj, climate finance and resilience researcher at the International Institute for Environment and Development, said the figures painted an outdated picture as climate finance has since declined as rich countries shrink their overseas aid budgets and increase spending on defence.
Last month, the OECD published figures showing that international aid – which includes climate finance – fell by nearly a quarter in 2025. The US was responsible for three-quarters of this decline. The OECD projects a further decline in 2026.
With Thursday’s climate finance report, the OECD is “publishing a victory lap for 2023 and 2024 at almost the same moment its own aid statistics show the funding base eroding underneath it,” Bharadwaj said.
The post New data shows rich nations likely missed 2025 goal to double adaptation finance appeared first on Climate Home News.
New data shows rich nations likely missed 2025 goal to double adaptation finance
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