scholarly journals Financing Climate Action and the COVID-19 Pandemic: An Analysis of 17 Developing Countries

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Natalia Alayza ◽  
Molly Caldwell

To meet the Paris Agreement’s long-term goals, it is crucial that developed countries support developing countries in achieving their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) and mobilizing the required climate finance. For this paper, we analyzed the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on climate finance and climate action implementation in 17 developing countries, drawing on available information from climate-finance tracking tools, reports, and climate needs assessments. Our analysis shows a decrease in climate finance flowing to developing countries. Most of this funding took the form of loans, and developing countries have reallocated or decreased their domestic climate flows because of the high costs of responding to the pandemic. As a result, climate-related projects have been delayed. Compounding the challenge, some developing countries have had to deal with major natural disasters amid the pandemic. Improved transparency through climate-finance tracking tools could help countries more easily identify their conditional and unconditional climate needs and mobilize and deploy resources more effectively. Climate-finance availability continues to fall short of the required amount of resources to implement developing countries’ NDCs and meet the Paris Agreement goals. The COVID-19 pandemic is widening this gap. Developed countries need to strengthen their commitment to close it by increasing climate finance.

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (01) ◽  
pp. 2050002
Author(s):  
MARÍA VICTORIA ROMÁN ◽  
IÑAKI ARTO ◽  
ALBERTO ANSUATEGI ◽  
IBON GALARRAGA

The Paris Agreement states that from 2020 developed countries will mobilize at least USD 100 billion per year to support climate action in developing countries. The attainment of this objective involves decisions by donor countries about the channel and destination of climate finance disbursements. This paper explores how the spending conditions associated to different disbursement options can affect the opportunities for donors to expand their exports. In particular, using a Multiregional Input-Output Model, it finds that donors have an economic incentive for choosing bilateral channels that enable to tie aid to the detriment of multilateral ones, such as the Green Climate Fund. On the other hand, local content requirements imposed by recipient countries do not substantially affect donors’ exports, since they do not reduce intermediate exports, which represent a relevant share of the total exports generated by the mitigation and adaptation actions analysed.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joe Thwaites ◽  
Julie Bos

In 2009, as part of the Copenhagen Accord, developed countries committed to collectively mobilizing $100 billion annually in climate finance by 2020 to support developing countries in reducing emissions and adapting to climate change. This commitment is foundational to the “grand bargain” behind the Paris Agreement: that all countries would commit to more ambitious climate action but developing countries would require enhanced support from developed countries to do so. The $100 billion is a collective commitment by developed countries, and meeting it will require them all to do their part. Over the past decade, there have been several assessments of aggregate progress towards the goal, but until now, no data set has attempted to comprehensively break down each country’s full public financial contribution. This technical note aims to fill this gap, increasing transparency and accountability around progress towards the $100 billion commitment by breaking down how much each developed country has contributed in public climate finance between 2013 and 2018, the most recent year for which comprehensive data are available. The individual breakdowns are then used to assess how countries’ efforts compare using a variety of metrics. The methodology for breaking down and analyzing individual country contributions can be applied to future climate finance data. To improve accountability of countries’ contributions towards the $100 billion commitment, this technical note identified several methodological barriers that need to be addressed in future climate finance reporting efforts.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tracy Carty ◽  
Jan Kowalzig ◽  
Bertram Zagema

International climate finance is vital to global cooperation on climate change. As many developing countries reel from the effects of coronavirus, the prospect of climate-induced extreme weather risks compounding crises and poverty. Climate change could undo decades of progress in development and dramatically increase global inequalities. There is an urgent need for climate finance to help countries cope and adapt. Over a decade ago, developed countries committed to mobilize $100bn per year by 2020 to support developing countries to adapt and reduce their emissions. The goal is a critical part of the Paris Agreement. As 2020 draws to a close, Oxfam’s Climate Finance Shadow Report 2020 offers an assessment of progress towards the $100bn goal. The third in a series, this report looks at the latest donor figures for 2017–18, with a strong focus on public finance. It considers how climate finance is being counted and spent; where it is going; how close we are to the $100bn goal; and what lessons need to be learned for climate finance post-2020.


Significance The China-US joint declaration to enhance climate cooperation, made on the final day of the summit, gives cause for optimism, despite bilateral relations worsening overall. China’s low profile at the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow last November should not be taken as indicating that the country is wavering on its commitment to climate action. Impacts There will be strong political pressure within China to meet climate targets ahead of time. China’s announcement that it will no longer finance overseas coal projects is a clear signal of support for the greening of BRI investments. Beijing will continue pushing for developed countries to meet climate finance commitments to developing countries.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  

As one of the leading development partners for Latin American and the Caribbean (LAC), the Inter-American Development Bank Group (IDB Group) is fully committed to lead by example on climate change action. Since the signing of the Paris Agreement, the IDB Group has provided over $20 billion in Climate Finance, amounting to about 60% of all Climate Finance to the region from Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs).


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joeri Rogelj ◽  
Daniel Huppmann ◽  
Volker Krey ◽  
Keywan Riahi ◽  
Leon Clarke ◽  
...  

<p>To understand how global warming can be kept well-below 2°C and even 1.5°C, climate policy uses scenarios that describe how society could transform in order to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions. Such scenario are typically created with integrated assessment models that include a representation of the economy, and the energy, land-use, and industrial system. However, current climate change scenarios have a key weakness in that they typically focus on reaching specific climate goals in 2100 only. <br><br>This choice results in risky pathways that delay action and seemingly inevitably rely on large quantities of carbon-dioxide removal after mid-century. Here we propose a framework that more closely reflects the intentions of the UN Paris Agreement. It focusses on reaching a peak in global warming with either stabilisation or reversal thereafter. This approach provides a critical extension of the widely used Shared Socioecononomic Pathways (SSP) framework and reveals a more diverse picture: an inevitable transition period of aggressive near-term climate action to reach carbon neutrality can be followed by a variety of long-term states. It allows policymakers to explicitly consider near-term climate strategies in the context of intergenerational equity and long-term sustainability.</p>


Author(s):  
Tobias Nielsen ◽  
Nicolai Baumert ◽  
Astrid Kander ◽  
Magnus Jiborn ◽  
Viktoras Kulionis

Abstract Although climate change and international trade are interdependent, policy-makers often address the two topics separately. This may inhibit progress at the intersection of climate change and trade and could present a serious constraint for global climate action. One key risk is carbon leakage through emission outsourcing, i.e. reductions in emissions in countries with rigorous climate policies being offset by increased emissions in countries with less stringent policies. We first analyze the Paris Agreement’s nationally determined contributions (NDC) and investigate how carbon leakage is addressed. We find that the risk of carbon leakage is insufficiently accounted for in these documents. Then, we apply a novel quantitative approach (Jiborn et al., 2018; Baumert et al., 2019) to analyze trends in carbon outsourcing related to a previous international climate regime—the Kyoto Protocol—in order to assess whether reported emission reductions were offset by carbon outsourcing in the past. Our results for 2000–2014 show a more nuanced picture of carbon leakage during the Kyoto Protocol than previous studies have reported. Carbon outsourcing from developed to developing countries was dominated by the USA outsourcing to China, while the evidence for other developed countries was mixed. Against conventional wisdom, we find that, in general, countries that stayed committed to their Kyoto Protocol emission targets were either only minor carbon outsourcers or actually even insourcers—although the trend was slightly negative—indicating that binding emissions targets do not necessarily lead to carbon outsourcing. We argue that multiple carbon monitoring approaches are needed to reduce the risk of carbon leakage.


2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nathan E. Hultman ◽  
Leon Clarke ◽  
Carla Frisch ◽  
Kevin Kennedy ◽  
Haewon McJeon ◽  
...  

Abstract Approaches that root national climate strategies in local actions will be essential for all countries as they develop new nationally determined contributions under the Paris Agreement. The potential impact of climate action from non-national actors in delivering higher global ambition is significant. Sub-national action in the United States provides a test for how such actions can accelerate emissions reductions. We aggregated U.S. state, city, and business commitments within an integrated assessment model to assess how a national climate strategy can be built upon non-state actions. We find that existing commitments alone could reduce emissions 25% below 2005 levels by 2030, and that enhancing actions by these actors could reduce emissions up to 37%. We show how these actions can provide a stepped-up basis for additional federal action to reduce emissions by 49%—consistent with 1.5 °C. Our analysis demonstrates sub-national actions can lead to substantial reductions and support increased national action.


2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-61
Author(s):  
Gerald Dapaah Gyamfi ◽  
George Gyan ◽  
Mavis Ayebea ◽  
Florence Naa Norley Nortey ◽  
Prince Yaw Baidoo

Though many researchers have carried out studies on electronic government (e-government) and its effect on performance of public organizations in developed countries not much such studies have taken place in developing countries, creating a gap in literature. The current study seeks to fill the gap. The study highlights the factors affecting the implementation and sustainability of E-government and effect of the factors on performance of the driver and vehicle licensing agency (DVLA) in Ghana. The study used purposive sampling technique to gather data from the DVLA (N-50) in 2016. The outcome of the study revealed that the challenges that impede the successful implementation of e-government include regular interruption of the electricity supply, online theft, poor ICT infrastructure, and financial constraints. Based on the benefits associated with the implementation of e-government, the current researchers made recommendations for long-term sustainability of e-government.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document