There has been a noticeable change in the attitude of developed countries to finance the pledges they made in 2009 to fund at least $100 billion annually towards climate change adaptation for developing countries, APA learnt on Wednesday.
This was the view of four ministers from Brazil, South Africa, India and China representing the BASIC Group of countries meeting at the 27th Conference of Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP27) being held in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt this week.
South Africa’s Minister of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment, Barbara Creecy, chaired the meeting to discuss the financial pledges with her fellow ministers from the BASIC group.
In a statement released after the meeting, BASIC countries said they were “gravely concerned that developed countries are still not showing leadership or responding with a matching progression of effort.”
Instead, they were carrying out significant increases in the consumption and production of fossil fuels as they continued to press developing countries to move away from the same resources, the BASIC group said.
“Such double standards are incompatible with climate equity and justice energy transition,” they said.
They added: “In fact, there has been backtracking on finance, mitigation commitment and pledges by developed countries to developing countries.”
Developing countries required predictable and appropriate support, including climate finance at the necessary scope, scale and speed, and access to technology and markets to ensure and enable their sustainable development, BASIC countries said.
“The key is to address risk aversion in investing in developing countries, to prioritise grant support, and to dramatically lower the cost and conditionality on borrowing money that places multilateral support out of reach of the majority of the world’s population — including in BASIC countries,” the ministers said.
“In this regard, the ministers underscored the urgent need for a fundamental transformation and modernisation of the global financial architecture, including a systematic reform of the multilateral development banks to make them fit-for-purpose in supporting sustainable development and just and equitable transitions,” they said.
NM/as/APA