Wealthy nations finalize $100bn climate aid at Paris summit – Macron

The wealthy nations have finalized a long overdue $100 billion climate finance pledge to developing countries and created a fund for biodiversity and the protection of forests.

This was revealed by France’s president on Friday at the closing of the summit in Paris.

President Emmanuel Macron was speaking at a final panel of a summit in Paris where some 40 leaders, including Nigeria’s President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, dozens from Africa, China’s prime minister, and Brazil’s
president had gathered to give impetus to a new global finance agenda.

The summit’s objective is to boost crisis financing for low-income states, ease their debt burdens, reform post-war financial systems, and free up funds to tackle climate change by gaining top-level consensus on how to promote a number of initiatives struggling in bodies like the G20, COP, IMF-World Bank, and United Nations.

The $100 billion pledge falls far short of poor nations’ actual needs but has become symbolic of wealthy countries’ failure to deliver promised climate funds. This has fueled mistrust in wider climate negotiations between countries attempting to boost CO2-cutting measures.

On Thursday, the World Bank announced it would ease financing for countries hit by natural disasters, and the International Monetary Fund announced it had achieved its target of making $100 billion in special drawing rights (SDRs) available for vulnerable nations.

Regarding the $100 billion in SDRs to be rechanneled, Washington has yet to pass legislation to release its share, worth more than one-fifth of the total. US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said that getting approval in Congress was a priority for the Biden administration.

“Leaders are fed up with the status quo; they want change,” World Trade Organisation chief Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala told the summit. “Leaders agree that the multiple challenges we are facing are all linked: poverty, climate change, and food security go hand in hand. Developing economies need additional and accessible financing, and they also want a just (climate) transition,” she said.

Zambia clinched a deal to restructure more than $6 billion in debts owed to other governments, its president said Thursday, in a long-awaited breakthrough to ease pressure on the southern African country’s strained public finances.

The coronavirus pandemic pushed many poor countries into debt distress as they were expected to continue servicing their obligations despite the massive shock to their finances.

Africa’s debt woes are coupled with the dual challenge faced by some of the world’s poorest countries in tackling the impacts of climate change while adapting to the green transition.

Some Western officials have accused China, the key bilateral creditor to many African countries, of dragging its feet in restructuring debt, something Beijing denies.

The summit also aimed for more engagement from the private sector.
Senegal struck a deal with wealthier countries on Thursday that will see it receive an initial 2.5 billion euros ($2.74 billion) in finance to develop renewable energy and speed up its transition to a
low-carbon economy.

A group of forestry heads of state and international organizations announced the launch of a biodiversity fund with the aim of forming partnerships by COP28 in Dubai in December, as stated in their statement.