High-income nations are increasingly claiming to be giving “climate finance” to lower-income countries for projects that were going ahead anyway for other reasons, according to a new analysis calling for big changes to reporting rules.
Funding of schemes where tackling climate change was “not the fundamental driver or motivation” has soared tenfold since the goal of a $100 billion annual climate finance pot was set in 2009, it has calculated.
In contrast, the increase was only 200% where the climate crisis was a project’s “principal” objective — and financing of those schemes has been broadly flat since 2017 when non-climate schemes began a precipitous rise.