Developed countries have an obligation to provide developing countries with climate finance to support their effective implementation of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Paris Agreement. The ‘developed’ and ‘developing’ country groups have starkly different responsibilities and capabilities with respect to the climate crisis. As the global economic and financial landscape, and the relative weight and influence of many countries shift, the nuances between countries have resurfaced, particularly in deliberations over the New Collective Quantified Goal as the successor to the current climate finance commitments.
This paper highlights that many developing countries are voluntarily providing climate finance to other developing countries for climate action, but their contributions go largely unrecognised as they do not report on this provision. It suggests that contributions from new sources could be encouraged through the establishment of an appropriate burden-sharing modality, and/or the equitable enabling of other Parties’ climate finance including the facilitation of voluntary support reporting, as well as by encouraging a wider set of sources to contribute to climate funds. These options, however, should be prefaced with developed country Parties fulfilling their existing, delayed commitment to provide and mobilise $100 billion a year by 2020.
