Countries diverge on future climate finance at COP27

Countries diverge on future climate finance at COP27

Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt: High-level talks on scaling up finance for developing countries to green their economies and prepare for global warming impacts began Wednesday at the COP27 climate conference with negotiators differing on the funding's size and providers.

In 2009, the chaotic UN climate summit in Copenhagen saw rich nations promise $100 billion a year by 2020 to the Global South, but two years past that deadline the amount delivered is still $17 billion short, according to the OECD.

Even this figure overestimates rich nation largesse if loans and funds not already allocated for other purposes are excluded from the tally, say Oxfam and other NGOs that track the issue.

Developed nations attending the November 6 to 18 talks at the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh now say the $100-billion goal will be reached by the end of 2023.

Discussions on how much to give after the current round of commitments expire in 2025 -- and whether to expand the pool of donors to include other nations, notably China -- have already gotten underway.

But more than a dozen years after the original pledge was made, estimates of future financial flows required have increased several fold, promising to make upcoming negotiations difficult.

The climate