UN former secretary general, Ban Ki-moon has warned that the world’s largest fund to help developing nations weather the climate crisis remains an “empty shell”, despite decades of promises by rich nations.
“We need to see a massive acceleration in mobilising trillions of dollars needed to keep the world from climate collapse,” Ki-Moon was quoted as saying.
According to the UN, international climate finance from rich to poor countries is between five and 10 times short of what is needed. In 2020, money set aside to help poorer countries adapt to climate breakdown amounted to $29bn – far below the $340bn a year that could be needed by 2030.
According to reports, the largest such fund, the Green Climate Fund, stands at $11.4bn. Rich countries have also been accused by NGOs of misleading accounting and issuing loans instead of grants.
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Ki-Moon, who is a South Korean diplomat, served from 2007 to 2016 as the eighth UN secretary-general; his first major initiative was to urge action on climate at the Bali summit in 2007. Two years later, at Cop15 in Copenhagen, rich countries promised to provide $100bn of climate finance a year every year for developing countries by 2020. However, Ban said: “After 14 years, nothing has been happening.”
The war in Ukraine, as well as conflicts in Tigray, Ethiopia, Yemen and Afghanistan, have taken the focus away from the climate crisis, he added. “The most acute crisis is climate change, which is happening so much faster than one might think. We have no time to lose.”
Ki-Moon did not agree with critics who saw Cop27, held in Egypt last year, as a failure. “We were able, after decades, to agree on loss and damage. That was a great success,” he said.
But it was now the “moral responsibility” of states to put talk into action, he added, to help poorer countries adapt to global heating, and to mitigate the loss and damage they have already suffered from the climate crisis. “I have been urging political leaders: raise your political ambition levels and then find a way to provide financial support. It is their moral responsibility.
“As we move towards Cop28 in the United Arab Emirates, our efforts in climate mitigation and adaptation must accelerate.”
Stepping down from his UN role, he said, meant he could now talk more forcefully about the climate emergency – for instance, when in 2020 he described Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris agreement as “morally irresponsible”.
Known for his quiet diplomacy during his time as secretary-general, Ki-Moon went on to co-found the Ban Ki-moon Centre for Global Citizens in 2017, to empower women and young people to achieve climate and development goals.
Story was adapted from the Guardian.
