This weekend in Paris, the United States and Switzerland hosted senior officials from 18 developed countries to discuss our collaborative efforts to scale up climate finance for developing nations, and to provide increased transparency on our progress.
Our countries are working together towards a goal that President Obama and other heads of state set nearly six years ago in Copenhagen: to mobilize – from public and private sources – $100 billion a year by 2020 to help the developing world address both the causes and impacts of climate change. This goal was set in the context of meaningful climate mitigation actions and transparency on implementation.
Today, at the halfway mark to 2020, we are well on our way to achieving this $100 billion goal. Data from sources such as the World Bank and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) makes clear that climate finance is flowing at significant levels, and there is ongoing work to produce improved estimates in the coming weeks. We all have a stake in enabling climate finance to continue to flow at scale.
The science is crystal clear: The threat posed by climate change is as global as it gets. Without global cooperation, the impacts will be devastating – and they will extend to every country on Earth.
The ambitious and durable agreement we aim to conclude later this year in Paris must be consistent with economic realities in the next decade and beyond. The scale of the climate change challenge demands an effective global partnership that brings to bear resources from all available channels to assist those most in need. Continued collaboration on climate finance, like the discussions this weekend, is critical to meeting this global challenge.
Read the joint statement here.
(Source: US Department of State)