Financing climate solutions for the Global South

IN THE past few months, many countries in the Global South have been battling natural calamities and disease outbreaks driven by the changing climate. Whether it is floods in Pakistan, heatwaves in India and across the world, or unseasonal outbreaks of dengue, malaria, and Ebola, these countries face irreconcilable loss and damage in addition to existing financial constraints.

At COP27 in Egypt last November, developing countries voiced the lack of support in climate financing for vulnerable nations. They sought a new global climate finance target by 2024, known as the New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG), which should be in the trillions of dollars, to address recent climate change issues. UN Secretary General António Guterres even urged that a Climate Solidarity Pact between wealthier nations and developing countries be created to meet key global climate goals. Private sector players such as Schneider Electric and Amazon also extended financial support to countries in the Global South.

The 190 countries represented at COP thus announced a “loss and damage” fund to aid vulnerable low- and middle-income countries that bear the brunt of the worst consequences of climate change even though they are hardly the highest carbon emitters. The operational details of the fund, however, remain undefined. This comes at a time when developed nations fell short of their COP21 pledge of mobilising US$100 billion a year starting from 2020 as climate financing aid for developing nations.