Development banks pledge $15 bln in new climate funds

A report released on Wednesday showed that the rich countries had already provided an estimated $62 billion of finance in 2014, and the new promises will help get to the goal, set in 2010, of $100 billion a year by 2020.

“This is a positive outcome and I think we can say with a few certainty that we will reach the $100 billion commitment” that was made at the 2009 climate talks in Copenhagen, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius told reporters.

A French government spokesman said afterwards that Friday’s pledges by the global institutions totaled an extra $15 billion a year.

The report, which intends to provide an up-to-date estimate on public and private climate finance, also notes that the funding stood at $53 billion in 2013 thus making an average of $57 billion annually over the 2013-14 period, the report notes. Adesina pledged to continue to strengthen “the complementary relationship between Africa50 and the African Development Bank in the delivery of much-needed infrastructure in Africa, particularly in addressing the most binding constraint, which is the development of bankable projects”.

But the development bank’s president, Akinwumi Adesina, said the world needs to rethink how it spends that money.

Aid experts said this week’s climate funding estimates highlighted a lack of money to help poor communities cope with worsening extreme weather and rising seas as the planet warms.

Twenty of the countries most vulnerable to climate change held the inaugural meeting of the “V20”, a counterpoint to the G20 that will exert pressure for more climate financing and manage the funds.

The report will likely cause tensions among wealthy nations, who will enjoy supported evidence that they are committed to supporting greener energy in the Global South, while low-income countries will find the financing to be insufficient.

Climate finance flows, he said, were an important element of the negotiations in the lead- up to COP21 in Paris, France, where countries are expected to finalise a new universal agreement on responses to climate change beyond 2020.

The European Investment Bank said it would increase the proportion of its lending in support of climate-related investment in developing countries from 25 percent to 35 percent.

It also follows Environment Minister Greg Hunt appointing five new board members to Australia’s Climate Change Authority this week.

Following is a statement from Dr. Andrew Steer, President and CEO, World Resources Institute. “The real question is about the shifting of the trillions”.

Currently, 21 percent of the Bank Group’s funding is climate related.

“The $100 billion is a political number”, Christiana Figueres, the executive secretary of the U.N.-run talks. “But it must be respected”.

With two months to go to a key United Nations conference in Paris tasked with delivering a comprehensive climate deal, finance ministers and central bank chiefs from 188 countries have put funding to fight global warming atop the agenda along with traditional economic issues as they meet in the Peruvian capital Lima this week.