As SB58 UN climate talks in Bonn wrap up, Teresa Anderson, ActionAid International’s Global Lead on Climate Justice, says:
“UN climate talks this week exposed a gaping hole in the funding needed to pay for climate action. Developing countries are being pushed deeper into debt by the costs of climate disasters, but the promised funding to cope with climate impacts and scale up green technologies still hasn’t appeared. Meanwhile, rich countries are trying to artificially inflate the numbers with loans and carbon markets, which are likely to do more harm than good to communities on the ground.
“It’s not surprising that developing countries are reluctant to negotiate further commitments if they suspect they won’t get the funding to deliver them. After all these years of broken promises, developing countries no longer want to take that leap of faith.
“All eyes are looking ahead to COP28 climate talks, in the hope of finalising a new fund to address loss and damage. The same crunchy questions around cash will need to be resolved if climate talks are to have a chance of really helping people on the front lines of the crisis.
“Unless the upcoming Summit for a New Global Financing Pact in Paris next week leads to unconditional debt cancellation and scaled-up, grant-based finance then it is unlikely to deliver the breakthrough that is so urgently needed.
“Agriculture negotiations in Bonn were another major disappointment, with governments unable to agree to anything, let alone real solutions for food security, smallholder farmers and the climate. Instead, we saw some countries trying to push a horrifying buffet of corporate agriculture approaches such as biotechnology and artificial intelligence in agriculture.”
ENDS
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Teresa Anderson, ActionAid International’s Global Lead on Climate Justice and currently in Bonn, is available for an interview.
About ActionAid
ActionAid is a global federation that works with more than 15 million people living in more than 40 of the world’s poorest countries. We want to see a just and sustainable world, in which everyone enjoys the right to a dignified life and freedom from poverty and oppression. We work for social justice and gender equality and poverty eradication.