Inadequate Climate Finance – Africa’s Plight

As the world witnesses the growing impact of climate change, it has become necessary for countries across the world, to adapt and ensure that their future development paths are aligned with the goal of restricting global warming to 1.5°C. To do this, countries, especially developing nations depend on the mobilization and availability of financial resources for adaptation and reduction of greenhouse gas emissions while supporting communities to alleviate the negative effects of climate change. These financial resources are collectively referred to as Climate finance. Funding typically comes from both private and public sources in the form of loans, guarantees, export credits, bilateral funding, funding from donor governments through multilateral bodies like the Green Climate Fund, the World Bank or the Asian Development Fund (Ares & Loft, 2021).

The Sustainable Development Goal (Goal 13) tasks countries to take urgent action to combat climate change and its impact. Under this goal, countries are obliged to take rigorous efforts towards mitigating and adapting to the growing impact of climate change. To this end, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) categorized countries into Annex I and Non-Annex I countries. The Annex I group of countries is made up of industrialized or developed nations with high greenhouse gas emissions and the Non-Annex I group is made up of developing countries. At the Conference of Parties (COP15) held in Copenhagen in 2009, Annex II countries (a subcategory of Annex I) pledged to provide the required climate finance for non-Annex I countries to mitigate and adapt to the impact of climate change. In Copenhagen, they first pledged an amount of US$ 30 billion between 2010 and 2012 as a “fast-start” to finance. Subsequently, between 2013 and 2014, aggregate climate ranged from $584 to $680 billion. At Copenhagen, the ultimate goal was to provide climate finance funding of up to $100 billion per year by 2020. At COP21, in Paris in 2015, developed nations agreed to push their commitments even further to provide $100 billion every year up to 2025.