Commenting on the outcomes of the Summit for a New Global Financial Pact in Paris (also known as the Paris Summit), Teresa Anderson, Global Lead on Climate Justice for ActionAid International, said:
“Climate finance is not only about making climate action fair; it’s about making climate action possible. The financial system needs to be totally transformed to help countries drowning in climate-induced debt, to stop it from fuelling our planet’s destruction, and to put us on track to survive the climate crisis. Unfortunately, the Paris Summit has not provided the breakthrough needed to find the funding for our planet’s survival. Powerful countries in the Global North have simply flexed to suit their own interests once again.
“Rich countries are three years late in meeting the already-insufficient target of $100 billion a year in climate finance. The outrage is that most of this money has come as loans which not only push climate-vulnerable countries deeper into debt but perversely force them to expand fossil fuels and deforestation to cover the costs of debt repayment. It’s disappointing that while global leaders made nice noises about “unlocking funds for climate action,” they simply proposed more loans and temporary debt relief instead of providing real money or canceling debts outright.”
ENDS
Notes to editors:
ActionAid’s recent report “The Vicious Cycle: Connections between the debt and climate crises” finds that 93% of climate-vulnerable countries are in, or at risk of, debt distress. The report is available here.
For media requests, please email Jenna.Farineau@actionaid.org or call 202 731 9593.
Teresa Anderson is available as a spokesperson and is in London.
About ActionAid
ActionAid is a global federation working with more than 15 million people living in more than 40 of the world’s poorest countries. We want to see a just, fair, and sustainable world in which everybody enjoys the right to a life of dignity and freedom from poverty and oppression. We work to achieve social justice and gender equality and to eradicate poverty.