Biden commits $1B to international climate fund
The financial injection to the Green Climate Fund brings the U.S. contribution to a total of $2 billion.
President Joe Biden pledged $1 billion to a major international climate aid fund on Thursday, a move that seeks to burnish United States credibility after former President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans had zeroed out U.S. contributions for the program.
The news: The financial injection to the Green Climate Fund brings the U.S. contribution to a total of $2 billion, still short of former President Barack Obama’s initial $3 billion promise. But it signals the Biden administration is responding to calls from developing nations to deliver more money to help them cope with the effects of the changing climate.
“The impacts of climate change will be felt the most by those who have contributed the least to the problem, including developing nations,” Biden told the virtual gathering of the the Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate. “As large economies we must support these economies. The fund is critical in ways to helping developing nations that they can’t do now — but it should not be the only way.”
Context: The Major Economies Forum was first launched in 2009 and now includes more than two dozen countries that produce 80 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions and GDP. It is the first such meeting since last November’s U.N. climate talks in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, where nations agreed to a “loss and damage” fund to pay vulnerable nations for irreparable climate damage.
Poorer nations have ramped up pressure on rich ones to provide more finance for combating climate change. Biden has tried to answer that call with a pledge to deliver $11 billion in climate finance annually by 2024 — but it is unclear how the administration will get House Republicans to approve that spending.
Biden said that nations must work together to reshape multilateral development banks like the World Bank to fight climate change. The Bank concluded its spring meetings last week and laid out an “evolution roadmap” to engage on climate change.
Details: The Biden administration also announced other initiatives, including a new “Methane Finance Sprint” to raise at least $200 million from public and philanthropic sources by the start of the annual U.N. climate talks in November. Biden said the effort would help the U.S. and other countries reach goals to slash methane emissions 30 percent this decade.
Biden also said he would requested $500 million over five years from Congress for the Amazon Fund, an effort to end deforestation.