At COP21, Parties committed to establishing the New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG) on climate finance before 2025. However, formal deliberations have proven contentious. The failure to meet the $100 billion goal for climate finance by 2020 has left developing countries filled with mistrust, frustration and scepticism.
The negotiations have been fraught with challenges, unveiling divergent expectations around ‘fair shares’ of climate finance, frameworks for effort-sharing, disagreements on appropriate institutional channels for finance and differing ideas around concessionality. As developing countries’ needs are further explored and understood – coupled with the lack of accountability around failed climate finance commitments – trust in the process has been further eroded.
Within this landscape of ambiguity, this report by the IMAL Initiative for Climate & Development proposes a series of recommendations for designing a climate finance goal that repairs trust and rebuilds confidence developed countries’ ambition for climate action. Responding directly to the lessons learned from the $100 billion goal, the report looks at how a needs-based approach to the NCQG’s quantum (total figure), a series of subgoals, a core provision goal, workable definitions of additionality and a consensus on effort-sharing can restore confidence.
With finance needs estimated to be in the trillions of dollars yearly until 2030, the stakes for the NCQG are monumental. COP29 represents a crucial opportunity to ramp up support for developing nations.
