France and also the UK became the third and fourth countries to pledge to double their contribution to the Green Climate Fund.
President Emmanuel Macron made the announcement within the final hours of the meeting of G7 leaders in Biarritz, on France's Chesapeake bay, on Monday evening.
France's pledge to contribute $1.71 billion towards the UN flagship climate fund came following the UK also promised to double its contribution to $1.75bn.
During the G7 meeting, Canada announced it would provide $224 million to the fund – matching the nation's previous offering.
Last year, both Germany and Norway dedicated to double of money they'd put in the fund, bringing the quantity of recent money pledged to simply under $6bn, based on a tracker through the World Resources Institute.
The fund was created like a carrot to convince poor countries, that are not historically responsible for global warming, to invest in curb their pollution underneath the Paris Agreement.
Wealthy countries initially promised $10.3bn in start-up capital towards the fund in 2023. Currency fluctuations and Donald Trump refusing to deliver $2bn of america pledge has yet seen the GCF receive only $7bn in contributions. To date, more than $5.2bn continues to be invested in projects to assist vulnerable countries cut emissions and adapt to the impacts of climate change.
The GCF has now asked rich countries for further contributions to raise cash for the next three years. It's because culminate inside a pledging conference in the autumn.
Yannick Glemarec, executive director of the GCF, said doubling contributions towards the fund was “vital to aid developing countries to boost and realise climate ambitions”. The fund has $15bn worth of outstanding projects requesting assistance.
The replenishment of the GCF is made a priority in the G7 summit over the weekend and it is high in agenda from the UN climate action summit convened by secretary general António Guterres the following month in Ny.
A G7 statement summarising discussions on climate change, biodiversity and oceans indicated that other G7 countries, which also include Italy, Japan and also the US, “are while finalising their contributions”.
UN special envoy on global warming Luis Alfsonso de Alba, told reporters that organisers from the UN climate action summit were “quite satisfied with the developments, especially around the replenishment of the GCF” – welcoming European countries' pledge to double their contributions.
While the announcements happen to be welcomed by observers, the space between the money pledged and what is useful in helping developing countries tackle global warming remains significant.
Rich countries have pledged to mobilise $100bn a year from a number of sources by 2023 to assist vulnerable countries cope with climate change – a target that is yet not even close to being met.
In an argument to CHN, the Alliance of Small Island States (Aosis) warned that “to even credibly approximate the goal of $100bn, both our development partners and also the private sector must act decisively”.
“The rapidly narrowing strategic window for effective climate action demands greater ambition and swift ramping up of contributions using their company larger emitters,” it added.
Jan Kowalzig, a specialist on climate politics at Oxfam’s German branch, warned that although doubling pledges to reach a target of $15bn in contributions “may sound ambitious”, it's in fact “a modest target when considering the GCF secretariat assumes its very own programming capacity could grow by $5bn a year”.
The replenishment of the GCF is “only one step” in meeting the $100bn goal and “additional steps are needed to close the gap”, he told CHN.
“What we currently see is the fact that rich countries, can not fulfil their promise, are inflating the amount they offer,” he warned, adding that countries were “grossly overestimating” the climate relevance from the funds provided.
Kowalzig also warned against contributions towards the fund in the form of loans, describing them as “highly problematic” and “deeply unfair”, pointing to the fact cyclone-hit Mozambique continues to be forced to accept loans to rebuild the country.
He added that loans reduced the GCF’s flexibility in allocating money for projects and did not satisfy rich countries' commitments underneath the Paris Agreement to satisfy developing countries' price of action.
