‘We have no time to lose’: Ban Ki-moon criticises climate finance delays

theguardian.com:

The former UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon has warned that the world’s largest fund to help developing nations weather the climate crisis remains an “empty shell”, despite decades of promises by rich nations.

“We need to see a massive acceleration in mobilising trillions of dollars needed to keep the world from climate collapse,” he said.

International climate finance from rich to poor countries is between five and 10 times short of what is needed, according to the UN. In 2020, money set aside to help poorer countries adapt to climate breakdown amounted to $29bn – far below the $340bn a year that could be needed by 2030.

The largest such fund, the Green Climate Fund, stands at $11.4bn. Rich countries have also been accused by NGOs of misleading accounting and issuing loans instead of grants.

Ban, a South Korean diplomat, served from 2007 to 2016 as eighth UN secretary general; his first major initiative was to urge action on climate at the Bali summit in 2007.

Two years later, at Cop15 in Copenhagen, rich countries promised to provide $100bn of climate finance a year every year for developing countries by 2020. However, Ban said: “After 14 years, nothing has been happening.”

The war in Ukraine, as well as conflicts in Tigray, Ethiopia, Yemen and Afghanistan, have taken the focus away from the climate crisis, he added. “The most critical crisis is climate change, which is happening so much faster than one might think. We have no time to lose.”

Ban did not agree with critics who saw Cop27, held in Egypt last year, as a failure. “We were able, after decades, to agree on loss and damage. That was a great success,” he said.

But it was now the “moral responsibility” of states to put talk into action, he added, to help poorer