UN climate chief pleads for funding as government budgets feel strain

The UN’s climate change arm faces “severe financial challenges” that could leave the organiser of the annual global COP summit struggling to help governments tackle global warming, its chief said.

Speaking as more than 30 countries met in Copenhagen for a two-day ministerial meeting, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Simon Stiell said its budget was less than half-funded.

The UNFCCC, which oversees the co-ordination of global efforts on climate issues, has said it needs €74mn over 2024 and 2025 for its so-called core budget, which is funded by national government contributions and was agreed at last year’s COP28 summit in Dubai.

The proposed spending includes as much as €4.8mn on communications, €4.5mn for the running of the executive overseeing the framework, led by Stiell, and €3mn on its conferences.

The body also said it needs a further €78mn for its so-called supplementary budget, which comes from voluntary contributions but so far only has about €10mn in the pot. This extra funding is to cover mandates such as work on countries’ climate plans and reports into how nations are meeting implementation of the 2015 Paris agreement, as well as activities linked to the COP28 accord.

The UNFCCC funding plea comes as concerns rise that dealing with climate change has fallen down the budget priorities of governments around the world as finances have been stretched by the Covid-19 pandemic and energy crisis.

At the same time, many countries are already grappling with the costly consequences of climate change, including extreme heat, wildfires and flooding.

More than 100 business leaders from companies such as Coca-Cola, Google and Ikea also outlined the hazards in a letter on Thursday that separately called on the European Commission to commit to cut emissions by 90 per cent by 2040 from 1990 levels. Europe is the fastest warming continent.

“There is no doubt, climate change is multiplying the risks we face,” said Ursula Woodburn, director of Corporate Leaders Group Europe, which organised the letter.

Stiell said the UN climate change arm was “attempting to meet an ever-growing mandate” to deal with climate change, but was at risk of being unable to do so because of a lack of cash.

Countries including leading polluters such as the US, Qatar and Korea, as well as many developing nations, are all in arrears for mandatory contributions from the period 2010-2023, the latest UNFCCC accounts show. Funds to help poor countries attend negotiations are also in deficit.

Last year, the UN’s Green Climate Fund, the world’s largest fund dedicated to assisting developing countries suffering from climate change, failed to draw as much funding as in previous financing rounds during its one-day pledging conference in Germany.

Developed and developing countries have also long been involved in clashes over a target of €100bn in financing that richer countries were meant to provide each year by 2020 to help poor countries cut emissions and manage climate change.

Finance is a key focus of the Copenhagen meeting this week, the first gathering of ministers since the agreement to “transition away” from fossil fuels at UN COP28 in Dubai.

Azerbaijan’s Mukhtar Babayev, COP29 president-designate, told the gathering that finance would “lie at the heart of climate diplomacy” this year.

COP28 president Sultan al-Jaber echoed the push. “Everything we do in the lead up to COP29 must be centred around finance and finance, and making finance available, accessible and affordable,” he said.

Additional reporting by Alice Hancock in Brussels

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