Global Climate Funding Bill Explained: Should Talk Trillions Now, Say Experts

In the run up to COP29 at Azerbaijan in November this year, there’s one decision that countries are struggling to reach consensus about – the global funding bill.

1. The Big Question: How Much Money Are the Developing Countries Owed?

The Global Funding Bill refers to money that the first world will pay the developing countries to help them reduce their carbon dioxide emissions and cope with climate change and global warming.

According to the United Nations, this responsibility to help the third world adapt falls on the rich nations since they were the ones that contributed to the climate crisis, starting from the industrial revolution back in the day.

But one question that the first world is struggling with is, how much money should they promise?

Pallavi Das, Programme Lead, Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW), speaking to The Quint, emphasises,

“Billions will simply not be enough. Since India's G20 presidency, the language has been to move from billions to trillions. CEEW research shows that India alone will need 10 trillion USD for net-zero transition. And the quantum of finance required is only expected to increase.”

Kavin Kumar Kandasamy, CEO of ProClime, a unified service provider in the climate space, agrees with Das. He shares that as per estimates, the collective transition to net-zero will require trillions of dollars, all of which “cannot be sourced from the Loss and Damage or through the New Collective Quantified Goal,” he says.

2. For the Developing Countries, Where Should This Money Go Further?

Das tells The Quint that historically, mitigation has always received more money than adaptation, since mitigation and clean technologies offer business opportunities to different players in the market space.

But now with increasing extreme weather events and rising climate worries, Das says that “investments in adaptation will need to increase to avoid catastrophic impacts on life, livelihoods, and infrastructure.”

Kandasamy, on the other hand, says that the developing countries will have to prioritise their own Nationally Determined Contributions – whether it be for energy transition or other mitigation, adaptation, and resilience activities.

News Article Link: https://www.thequint.com/climate-change/climate-change-global-climate-funding-bill-cop29-first-world-consensus-finance#:~:text=%E2%80%9CBillions%20will%20simply%20not%20be,is%20only%20expected%20to%20increase.%E2%80%9D