What is Australia's fair share when it comes to financing the necessary climate transition?
In a headline today, the Australian government has pledged AU$150m in #ClimateFinance for Pacific nations.
Good news, right? Isn't this PM Anthony #Albanese "ending the #ClimateWars" by actually doing what #Australia ought to have done years ago? Let's consider that assumption.
Back in 2009 at the much hyped, but ultimately deeply disappointing international climate negotiations in #Copenhagen known as #COP15, one step forward that was agreed, even as more comprehensive or ambitious agreements slipped away was that the wealthy nations of the world (including #Australia) collectively pledged to be providing US$100b each year to help the poorer nations transition away from #FossilFuels (#ClimateMitigation) and develop in ways that help societies adapt to the warming that cannot be mitigated (#ClimateAdaptation).
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The provision of US$100b in #ClimateFinance per year was promised by 2020, with a #GreenClimateFund being set up in 2010–11 and national contributions commencing in subsequent years. An updated agreement in 2012 clarified that these funds had to be "new and additional", i.e. not simply a rebranding of existing #ForeignAid. And they had to be made to the international Green Climate Fund, not via other bilateral or multilateral agreements.
Disputes over the international distribution of responsibilities for funding #ClimateMitigation and #ClimateAdaptation measures—costly measures that would benefit everyone—had long been one of the main sticking points in the decades of UN climate negotiations since 1992 when the #UNFCCC was established. (UNFCCC = United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, i.e. the international agreement to have international climate negotiations in the first place, and how to go about those negotiations.)
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Over the last ten years, the promise of a #GreenClimateFund has been a big piece of the puzzle when it comes to global climate agreement. Arguably, the #ParisClimateAgreement reached in 2015 and signed by every nation in the world (bar war-torn #Syria) in 2016 was one of the biggest steps forward in international cooperation over a global crisis in the history of humanity (while still being thunderously inadequate to the scale of the #ClimateCrisis). After decades of arguing and partial steps, 2015 was the first time a major agreement had been reached that included all the major polluting nations promising to reduce their carbon emissions towards a goal of at least somewhat #HabitablePlanet
And the pledge of a US$100bn/yr Green Climate Fund was widely acknowledged in international negotiations as a major enabler of this historic Paris Climate Agreement. Though still far from adequate (some estimates said that to be fair, it really ought to have been five times as large), it was nonetheless a solid first formal step towards recognising the massively unequal responsibilities of various nations when it comes to causing planetary #ClimateDisruption.
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So what's a fair share of the #GreenClimateFund for each wealthy nation to contribute?
Calculations by the #WorldResourcesInstitute a couple of years ago claimed that a 'fair share' for each wealthy nation that had pledged to contribute would be the equivalent of 0.22% of Gross National Income (#GNI) each year by 2020. The World Resources Institute found that during 2016–2018 (the first three years of the Green Climate Fund), only four countries were actually already meeting or exceeding their fair share of climate finance contributions: #Germany, #Japan, #France and #Luxembourg. #Sweden and #Norway were close (>80%). #Denmark was the only other country over 66%. At the very bottom of the list came the #USA and #Australia.
For Australia to be making a 0.22% 'fair share' of its (then) roughly US$1.3 trillion GNI, this would amount to around US$2.86b each year (=AU$4.33b). This obviously was not happening. How far short of its pledge had the Coalition government fallen? How much was Australia actually contributing? Even less than the World Resources Institute recorded...
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When the #GreenClimateFund was being established, Australia's Prime Minister was #TonyAbbott, a #ClimateDenier, who had won the 2013 federal election promising to dismantle the baby steps towards a #ClimatePolicy the previous #Labor government had made.
So there was little surprise when PM Abbott announced in Nov 2013 that #Australia would be contributing a massive sum of $0 to the Green Climate Fund.
At the time, he claimed Australia would chip in AU$200m (then =USD$187m) over four years, but since this was merely a rebranding of existing #ForeignAid, it clearly didn't count as "new and additional funding", a fact that most journalists blithely ignored, falling for the bait-and-switch. Or we might say instead that the Australian government was overstating its foreign aid commitments by $200m over those years.
Nonetheless, the four years were soon gone, as was Tony Abbott, as well as his successor #MalcolmTurnbull, who in turn had been replaced as PM by #ScottMorrison. When it came time to pledge again in 2018, Morrison announced Australia would be pulling out of the Green Climate Fund entirely, a path also taken by the #Trump administration at the time, whom Morrison was often cribbing notes from when it came to what kinds of #cruelty and #selfishness he could get away with.
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So, today's announcement by PM #Albanese is at least a re-engagement with the global community on #ClimateFinance after years of #Coalition isolationism. However, it is worth noting that of the AU$150m announced today, only $50m goes to the #GreenClimateFund, with $100m directed towards a different multilateral body, the Pacific Resilience Facility. That's the equivalent of about US$33m, or 0.002% of Australia's #GNI of roughly US$1.6 trillion (2022 figures).
To be contributing the 0.22% of GNI mentioned earlier, Australia would need to contribute more than one hundred times that much each year (around US$3.5b, or AU$5.3b).
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And to make up for the last four years of contributing nothing (and even putting aside the many years of failure under the #Coalition between 2013–19 when finances ought to have been ramping up to meet the 2020 goal), #Australia has a backlog of about $AU20b to be seen as anything like a 'fair' contributor to the #GreenClimateFund, remembering that the US$100b/yr represents only a fraction of what the developing world needs to ensure a just and swift transition to a climate-stable future.
And that's before we consider the #LossAndDamage fund announced a few days ago (another long-term sticking point in #UNFCCC negotiations and a separate piece of international #ClimateFinance), to which Australia has not yet made any kind of pledge.
Until Australia takes credible steps towards those kinds of figures, Australian government promises ought to be treated by all our neighbours as so much smoke.
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"The #UnitedStates has pledged $3 billion to the #GreenClimateFund, Vice President Kamala Harris said on Saturday in Dubai at the U.N. #COP28 climate summit.
The latest pledge would be additional to another $2 billion previously delivered by the United States. The politically divided U.S. Congress needs to authorize the funding."
The 52nd Pacific Islands Forum Meeting is in Rarotonga, Cook Islands from 6-10 November 2023, in lead up to #COP28. China and Australia's climate targets on the agenda as Pacific Islands Forum meeting kicks off in Cook Islands.
🇦🇺 PM Albanese is likely to commit about $50 million for the #GreenClimateFund and a substantially larger sum for the Pacific Resilience Facility, and will continue to seek support for hosting COP31 in 2026. Australia will likely come under pressure for expanding coal and gas as Pacific nations stress the Port Vila Call to Action for a Just Transition to a Fossil Fuel Free Pacific. https://www.pican.org/_files/ugd/923d4b_8c205a9319a645d4b4926155f49c6425.pdf
"Prolonged heatwaves, floods, raging wildfires and devastating hurricanes have struck these wealthier regions, leaving them bewildered.
Against this backdrop, it should surprise no one if richer nations redirect financing that was previously allocated for the Global South’s adaptation efforts, channelling it instead towards domestic recovery efforts."