World Bank and IMF climate snub 'worrying': COP29 presidency

The hosts of the most recent UN climate talks are worried international lenders are retreating from their commitments to help boost funding for developing countries' response to global warming.

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This anxiety has grown as the Trump administration has slashed foreign aid and discouraged US-based development lenders like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund from focussing on climate finance. Developing nations, excluding China, will need an estimated $1.3 trillion a year by 2035 in financial assistance to transition to renewable energy and climate-proof their economies from increasing weather extremes.

But nowhere near this amount has been committed. At last year's UN COP29 summit in Azerbaijan, rich nations agreed to increase climate finance to $300 billion a year by 2035, an amount decried as woefully inadequate.

Azerbaijan and Brazil, which is hosting this year's COP30 conference, have launched an initiative to plug the shortfall that includes expectations of "significant" contributions from international lenders. But so far only two -- the African Development Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank -- have responded to a call to engage the initiative with ideas, said COP29 president Mukhtar Babayev.