Delaying climate finance till 2035 'damaging' to poor countries - study

Poor countries need $1tn (£787bn) a year in climate finance by 2030, five years earlier than rich countries are likely to agree at ongoing UN climate talks, a new study has found.

- Fiona Harvey

Waiting until 2035 to receive the funding, which is to help them cut greenhouse gas emissions and cope with extreme weather, would place damaging burdens on vulnerable countries, warned the Independent High-Level Expert Group on Climate Finance (IHLEG), a group of leading economists.

The study was published this morning as governments from nearly 200 countries worked on fraught negotiations over how much finance rich countries should provide, and how much could come from other sources, at the Cop29 summit in Azerbaijan. World leaders, who had attended the opening days of the conference in Baku, left their ministers and high-ranking officials to get on with the job of forging a new global plan on climate finance, due to be wrapped up at the end of next week.

But large areas of disagreement between the rich and poor world remain, including how much money should be provided and from what sources.

The talks are focused on a goal of at least $1tn a year in climate finance for poor countries by 2035. This figure comes from a previous study IHLEG, a group of economists convened by Cop presidencies since 2021 and chaired by the economists Lord Stern, Vera Songwe and Amar Bhattacharya, which found in 2022 that about $2.4tn a year was needed.

At least half of this could come from poor countries' own budgets, the original study found, leaving about $1tn a year to come from external sources, including overseas aid from the rich.