Developing countries accuse rich of broken climate promises at UN
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Leaders of island nations, including Tuvalu, called for funding to combat rising sea levels and more to flow to the countries that need it with fewer obstacles.
PHOTO: REUTERS
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NEW YORK – Leaders of developing countries threatened by climate change told rich nations at the United Nations General Assembly that they are falling far short of promises to fund measures to combat rising sea levels, droughts and deforestation.
“It is past time for the rich world to meet its obligations and get money to where it’s needed most,” Marshall Islands President Hilda Heine told the assembly last week. “We’ve heard the promises – but promises don’t reclaim land in atoll nations like mine.”
Wealthy countries have struggled to meet climate finance commitments. Their funding reached US$100 billion (S$1.29 billion) a year, an amount agreed upon in 2009, two years late in 2022.
At a UN climate summit in 2024, leaders agreed to provide developing countries US$300 billion a year by 2035. Many developing countries blasted that sum as far too small to meet the need. Experts have estimated that developing countries need at least US$1 trillion annually by the end of the decade.
Leaders of developing countries say rich nations must provide resources to cope with climate change, a crisis they created.
Since the Industrial Revolution, the US has been the largest cumulative emitter of greenhouse gases, the primary cause of climate change, according to an analysis by Our World in Data.
Fiji Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka said last week during the week-long leaders session: “Those who shoulder the blame must foot the bill.”
Climate change forces people to flee, Ghana says
In US President Donald Trump’s second term, the US withdrew for a second time from the Paris agreement
During his address to the General Assembly last week, Mr Trump dismissed climate change as “the greatest con job” in the world.
The year 2024 was the hottest year on record as global temperatures exceeded 1.5 deg C above the pre-industrial era for the first time, bringing the world closer to breaching the pledge governments made in the Paris pact.
Ghana President John Mahama pushed back against growing anti-immigration policies, one of Mr Trump’s top priorities, in the Global North, attributing much migration to climate change.
“Many of those migrants are climate refugees,” Mr Mahama told the General Assembly. “When the desert encroaches and our villages and towns become unliveable, we are forced to flee.”
Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud told the assembly that climate change “is forcing governments in developing countries, including my own, to make impossible financial trade-offs which hamper our own aspirations for investing in resilience and development”.
Droughts, floods and rising seas erode livelihoods and displace families, threatening to undo progress on peace and development, and around 10 per cent of developing nations’ budgets are spent on responding to climate change, Mr Mohamud said.
Germany said on Sept 29 it provided a record €11.8 billion (S$17.9 billion) for international climate financing in 2024 and met its global commitment by allocating at least €6 billion of public funds to the cause.
But leaders of island nations including Tuvalu, Comoros, Madagascar and St Lucia called for funding to flow to the countries that need it most with fewer obstacles.
Comoros President Azali Assoumani said: “We call for equitable and simplified access to climate financing.”
Another major greenhouse gas emitter, China, said that by 2035, it would cut its emissions by 7 per cent to 10 per cent from their peak
Palau President Surangel Whipps Jr said: “If the world is serious about 1.5 deg C, we urge you to come to our region, to see with your own eyes what the Pacific is facing and be moved to act.” REUTERS
