Climate NGOs slam rich countries for not honoring financial pledges

Anadolu staff

BERLIN (AA) – Environmental experts Thursday slammed rich countries for breaking their promises on climate funding on the final day of the UN climate conference in Germany’s Bonn city.

“I have one message for rich countries. Please stop playing games,” Harjeet Singh from the Climate Action Network told reporters at the conference building.

“Rich countries are making all kinds of excuses to just put us into more processes than putting money on the table. And having seen them behaving like this for 15 years myself, I would say your hypocrisy, your tactics have been exposed,” he said.

The climate expert, who is closely following the talks in Bonn, said lower income countries have presented plans for climate measures, but industrialized nations offered them loans instead of grants.

“For them, everything is investment. When the world is burning, rich countries want to make money out of it. That’s where we are,” he said.

“It’s immoral, it’s unjust, and we want to put it very clearly to them that you can’t make money from people’s despair, something that you have caused, your development model has caused,” he added.

Teresa Anderson from the ActionAid International also deplored the slow progress at the Bonn climate conference and criticized rich countries for not delivering on their promises.

“This week UN climate talks exposed a gaping hole in the funding needed to pay for climate action,” she told reporters.

Anderson said the reluctance of rich countries to honor their funding promises was putting lower income and developing countries into a difficult position and many of them were facing financial problems due to the cost of the climate crisis.

“It’s not surprising, therefore, that developing countries are actually reluctant to negotiate further commitments if they suspect that they won’t get the funding to deliver them. After all these years of broken promises, developing countries no longer want to take that leap of faith,” she said.

Anderson underlined that 93% of climate vulnerable countries are in or at risk of debt distress.

“Offering loans branded as climate finance is just going to make that problem worse. As for many countries the only way they can repay their debt is by expanding fossil fuel, deforestation and industrial agriculture,” she said.

The UN’s Bonn Climate Change Conference, which started on June 5, brought together delegates from around 175 countries to discuss major issues and prepare the agenda for the COP28 summit, scheduled to take place in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates in November.