Global South needs 2 trillion a year to tame, cope with climate, According to an UN-backed assessment released on Tuesday, if the world is to stop the global warming juggernaut and deal with its effects by 2030, developing and rising countries—aside from China—will need spending well beyond $2 trillion yearly.
The report, which was commissioned by Britain and Egypt, the hosts of the COP27 conference this week in Sharm el-Sheikh and the 2021 UN climate summit in Glasgow, respectively, predicted that wealthy nations, investors, and multilateral development banks should contribute a trillion dollars. The remaining $1.4 trillion must come from domestic private and public sources, according to the paper. Other than China, there is currently around $500 billion invested in emerging and developing economies.
Global South needs 2 trillion a year to tame, cope with climate
The new 100-page analysis, Finance for Climate Action, is presented as an investment blueprint for greening the global economy quickly enough to meet Paris cli-mate treaty goals of capping the rise in global temperatures below two degrees Celsius, and at 1.5C if possible. Warming beyond that threshold, scientists warn, could push Earth toward an unlivable hothouse state.
“Rich countries should recognise that it is in their vital self-interest — as well as a matter of justice given the severe impacts caused by their high levels of current and past emissions — to invest in climate action in emerging market and developing countries,” said one of the report’s leads, economist Nicholas Stern, who also authored a landmark report on the economics of climate change.
The report is among the first to map out the investment needed across the three broad areas covered in UN cli-mate talks: reduction of the greenhouse gas emissions that drive warming (mitigation), adapting to future climate impacts (adaptation), and compensating poor and vulnerable nations for unavoidable damages already incurred, known as “loss and damage”.
– Fossil fuel lock-in –
It calls for grants and low-interest loans from the governments of developed countries to double from about $30 billion annually today to $60 billion by 2025. “These sources of finance are critical for emerging markets and developing countries to support action on restoring land and nature, and for protecting against and responding to the loss and damage due to climate change impacts,” the authors said.
“Emerging market” countries include large economies in the global south that have seen rapid growth — coupled with rising greenhouse gas emissions — in recent decades, including India, Brazil, South Africa, Indonesia and Vietnam. Historically seen as part of this group, China was excluded from the new estimates, presumably because of its unique and hybrid status.
With the Belt and Road Initiative and the encouragement of “South-South” investment throughout the developing world, Beijing has established itself as a significant international investor in its own right. Its economy, the second largest in the world, has advanced in many ways.
In the context of cli-mate change, developing countries include both the most vulnerable to climatic hazards, such as small island governments that face existential risks from sea-level rise and increasingly destructive storms, as well as the world’s poorest economies, many of which are in Africa.
“Most of the growth in energy infrastructure and consumption projected to occur over the next decade will be in emerging market and developing countries,” said Stern.
“If they lock in dependence on fossil fuels and emissions, the world will not be able to avoid dangerous cli-mate change, damaging and destroying billions of lives and livelihoods in both rich and poor countries.”