Supporting developing countries on their path to net zero is no longer a “mission impossible”

Twelve years ago, the world’s richest countries agreed to a goal of providing $ 100 billion a year by 2020 to help poor countries on the front lines of a climate crisis, a crisis they did not cause, to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases and adapt to the impacts. of a warming planet.

The commitment was always understood as an advance. The scale of the problem with both adaptation and mitigation of the impact of a changing global climate system is such that we will ultimately need trillions of dollars to be mobilized from the public and private sectors. But the US $ 100 billion in public financing and private financing that made public investment possible was emblematic of the establishment of good faith on the part of the developed countries that pledged to it.

Trust is perhaps the most important currency in any negotiation that requires global cooperation. And these negotiations are those on which the future of our planet rests. Achieving the $ 100 billion climate finance target was, and is, a critical enabler of multilateral trust and multilateral progress.

Several months ago, an analysis by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) indicated that the developed world would almost certainly not meet the 2020 climate finance target. The developing world was justifiably disappointed. Trust was the victim.

In the run-up to the critically important talks at COP26 in Glasgow in November, concerns that the developed world could not, or would not, gamble threatened to cast a dark shadow over international climate negotiations, jeopardizing the progress.

COP26 host Great Britain recognized that much more needs to be done to ensure that the climate finance goal is achieved within a relevant time frame. He asked Canada and Germany to lead a process to encourage additional climate finance commitments and to transparently demonstrate how and when developed countries would reach the $ 100 billion goal.

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At the beginning of our work in July, my German counterpart ironically described our joint endeavor as “Mission Impossible”. We spend a lot of time with leaders and officials from countries in the developed and developing world, gaining a deeper understanding of their perspectives and striving for additional ambition from donor countries.

The process created momentum that saw many countries increase their climate finance budgets with substantial new pledges. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had already stepped up, announcing in June that Canada is doubling its international commitment to climate finance to $ 5.3 billion over the next five years. Several other countries subsequently followed.

The “Climate finance implementation plan”Delivered by Germany and Canada on October 25 reflects a significant increase in climate finance ambition. The plan provides confidence that the annual threshold of $ 100 billion will approach being reached in 2022 and will be reached in 2023. Importantly, it projects that $ 100 billion will be exceeded in subsequent years, and that up to $ 117 billion in 2025. An OECD methodology chapter published alongside the Implementation Plan showed that $ 500 billion is likely to be mobilized over the 5-year period from 2021 to 2025.

While significant progress has been made on climate finance since 2015, achieving the $ 100 billion goal has been delayed two to three years. However, through the work done by Canada and Germany to develop the delivery plan, it is clear that this goal will be achieved and exceeded in 2024 and 2025.

I believe that the results of the Implementation Plan process will help rebuild the credibility of the developed world’s commitments and generate positive momentum at COP 26.

Another product of the Delivery Plan process is that through it we have developed better mechanisms for tracking and reporting on nations’ forward-looking commitments, raising the bar in terms of providing greater trust and transparency as we move forward.

Much work remains to be done on climate finance. Negotiators are already looking more to the future. At COP26, discussions will begin on a new climate finance agreement for the period after 2025.

But today there is a degree of optimism about the prospects for success that simply did not exist three months ago. Personally, I am very proud of the role that Canada was able to play in enabling this important step forward.

Jonathan Wilkinson was re-elected for a third term as Member of Parliament for North Vancouver on September 20, 2021. On October 26, he was appointed Minister of Natural Resources of Canada, having been Minister of Environment and Climate Change since 2019, and Minister of Fisheries, Oceans and the Coast Guard of Canada from 2018 to 2019.