Atin Ito First Filipino Community Newspaper in Ontario
Image Credit: orfonline.org
EVER since the signing of the landmark Paris Climate Agreement in 2015, one of that global accord’s most important provisions, the funding of the climate adaptation needs of vulnerable countries by the developed world responsible for the greatest part of planet-warming greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, has proven to be one of its most problematic. Not only have rich countries consistently failed to meet the $100 billion per year target established by the Paris Agreement, as a submission to the Transitional Committee of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) late last month highlight, those countries have cynically found a way to make vulnerable countries pay for their own climate response.
This is obviously completely unacceptable and further strengthens our call for the accounting of climate financing to be in the hands of countries like the Philippines, which need it, and not those that are only begrudgingly and partially meeting their responsibility to provide it.
The Transitional Committee is tasked with developing a draft plan for the one significant idea to emerge from the COP27 climate summit in Egypt in 2022, a fund to compensate at-risk countries for climate-induced damage and loss. The committee met last month in Paris; it held a previous meeting here in Manila in February. In the run-up to its meetings, the committee typically solicits comments and recommendations from various stakeholders, but its members may now be regretting striving for inclusiveness after being confronted by some strong, and we think completely justifiable demands from a coalition of 118 civil society organizations (CSOs), including several from the Philippines.
Citing an analysis by Oxfam using data through the year 2020, the CSO group showed that fully 80 percent of all reported public climate financing has come in the form of concessional and non-concessional loans and other non-grant instruments. Put more simply, climate-vulnerable countries are being asked to pay for climate adaptation made necessary by those who are demanding repayment, and those countries then count those loaned funds as part of their “contribution” to climate response.
Among the biggest climate finance contributors, Japan, France and Germany are the three biggest offenders. By contrast, EU institutions (except for the European Investment Bank), Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands and Australia provide all or nearly all of their funding obligations in the form of grants that need not be repaid by the beneficiary countries.
The group of CSOs made two demands in their submission to the Transitional Committee. First, any climate-related funding, meaning funding that is intended to meet obligations under the Paris Agreement, must be in the form of grants or other non-debt instruments. Second, obligatory climate financing must be provided over and above other forms of development assistance that is already being provided or is in the pipeline. For example, funding for a commuter rail extension, which does not primarily have the purpose of climate change adaptation or mitigation, cannot be counted against a country’s funding obligation simply because it may have coincidental environmental benefits.
At a time when unsustainable debt among countries that are both financially challenged and highly vulnerable to climate change impacts has become a matter of critical concern to developed countries and their development finance institutions, it is utterly shameful that anyone should need to call out those countries on their imposing further debt on those least equipped for it, but here we are. It needs to stop, and it needs to stop immediately.
As we have recently argued, the only rational way in which climate funding for vulnerable countries can be fairly and accurately accounted for is if that responsibility is given to the beneficiary countries. We, here in the Philippines, are in a better position than anyone else to understand our climate response needs and assess if investments, regardless of where they come from, are effectively addressing those needs. We again urge the government to study the matter and to create a framework by which funding can be accurately and consistently defined as climate funding, or something else. Likewise, the government should reject any funding offers for climate response that are in the form of loans, regardless of concessional terms.
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Credit belongs to : www.manilatimes.net
