Countries urge action on climate finance

Environmental and climate ministers from Brazil, South Africa, India and China, known as the BASIC countries, have urged developed nations to provide and mobilize new and additional climate finance to developing economies in a timely and adequate manner.

They made the remarks in a joint statement following the 2024 BASIC Ministerial Meeting on Climate Change in Wuhan, Hubei province, on Sunday.

The ministers expressed serious concern over pre-2020 gaps in both mitigation ambition and implementation by developed countries, it said. They said the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change had indicated that developed countries should have reduced emissions by 25 to 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020, but that was not achieved.

The statement also highlighted developed countries' inadequate 2030 and 2050 mitigation ambitions, as well as the backtracking and incoherence in their climate policies and action.

Noting the inconsistency of climate finance accounting by developed countries as a factor "seriously jeopardizing trust and legal certainty", the statement urged rich countries to abide by their legal commitments on both mitigation and finance.

In 2009, developed countries pledged to deliver $100 billion per year in international climate finance by 2020. The 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change extended the target, requiring contributing nations to maintain the annual contribution through 2025. However, the commitment has never fully materialized.

"In view of the urgency of the climate crisis, ministers call on developed countries to recognize the failure to fulfill their commitments, and urge them to step up their efforts and fulfill their commitments on climate finance to provide and mobilize new and additional climate finance to developing countries in a timely and adequate manner, and take the lead in mitigation," the statement said.

The ministers pledged their full support to the incoming Azerbaijani presidency of the COP 29 United Nations climate change conference in November and said they look forward to working with all parties toward a successful conference in Baku.

They said the main outcome of COP 29 will be to set the New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG) on climate finance from developed to developing nations, as the key enabler for developing states to communicate ambitious nationally determined contributions in 2025 and for enhanced climate implementation in a critical decade.

The ministers said the new goal must make advances on fulfilling outstanding gaps in the definition of climate finance, consistent with the definition of climate finance in the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and its Paris treaty.

The statement noted that attempts by developed countries to dilute their climate finance legal obligations under international law through suggestions of broadening the contributor base "could deviate negotiation efforts from core issues for climate action and ambition".

"Based on delivery of grant-based public-funded support by developed countries, ministers indicated their expectation that the quantum of the NCQG should shift from billions to trillions of US dollars per year," it said.

The ministers called for global solidarity in ensuring that "no country, place nor individual is left behind", and they further reiterated the BASIC countries "strong determination to show solidarity toward the Global South", the statement said.