The following post is by Michael G. Williams, Vice President of Strategic Development for the BlueGreen Alliance.
Countries that have developed and that have brought their people out of poverty (most of them, at least) have done so by exploiting natural resources. For a long time (most of the 20th century), that exploitation happened with little regard to the environment and with no knowledge of any impacts to the planet’s climate.
Well, given that developed nations benefitted by emitting massive amounts of carbon pollution and since the science of climate change means that any further development needs to be done so consciously with minimal impact on further climate change… then it truly is only fair that developed nations support developing nations build and grow a clean economy and adapt to the impacts climate change that are inevitable.
That brings us to finance, a core principle for any comprehensive agreement. (Refresher… I wrote about just transition and verification the last two days). Specifically,
[The BlueGreen Alliance] believe[s] that in addition to its bilateral assistance programs, the U.S. should support the Green Climate Fund, which will help to achieve two core goals. The first is to help support a clean energy economic development model for developing and emerging economies. Considering the climate implications as well as the potential to support domestic industries and jobs, we cannot afford to have clean energy and energy-efficient technologies deployed in developing countries only many years after they are deployed in developed countries.
The second goal is to provide international adaptation assistance. Vulnerable communities across the world are already being impacted by climate change, and even if we take much more aggressive action to limit the further build-up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, these impacts will continue to increase over the next several decades. As we move forward with job-creating solutions to the climate crisis, we must simultaneously take action to help the world’s most vulnerable communities adapt to the unavoidable impacts of extreme climate-related events, temperature increases, and sea level rise.
Two big items related to finance happened yesterday. First, Secretary Kerry announced a doubling of the U.S.’s commitment to adaptation assistance. Second, new draft text was released. Article 6 covers finance, and progress appears to have been made on the semantics of how financial assistance is provided.
Back to the brass tacks… or actual dollars and cents… the announcement by Senator Kerry is in addition to the $3 billion pledge made by President Obama at the beginning of the conference to support clean economy development and direct emissions reductions. The broader finance pledge came out of an effort announced by then-Secretary Clinton in 2009 in Copenhagen that developed nations would provide $100 billion a year to developing nations by 2020. The pledges in Paris mean a great deal toward actually achieving that goal and building much needed trust.