Analysis: Higher-Income Countries Still Fall Short of Their Fair Share of Climate Finance

12 September 2022

Analysis by the Zurich Flood Resilience Alliance, of which Mercy Corps is a member, along with ODI highlights stark discrepancies between climate finance pledges by higher-income countries and what is being delivered. In 2009, wealthy countries promised to mobilize $100 billion a year in climate finance between 2020 and 2025. However, they fell short of this target in 2020 and 2021, and are expected to do so again in 2022. 

The analysis, which builds on ODI’s “fair share” methodology for attributing responsibility for climate finance developed for COP26, finds that:

  • The United States provided just 5% of its fair share in 2020. Although its economy is 40% larger than the European Union’s, it provided only one-twelfth as much climate finance. 

  • Australia and Canada are also falling well short, providing just 23% and 18% of their fair share respectively. They have not pledged to meaningfully increase their climate finance provision by 2025. 

  • As the host of COP26, the UK was under the spotlight in 2020 and 2021. But it only provided around half of its fair share in 2020 and will only creep up to two-thirds by 2025. The UK's planned increase in climate finance will be dwarfed by its recent ODA cuts. 

  • Italy and Spain have not played their part to date, although both recently announced a welcome pledge to lift their contributions by 2025. 

  • Only seven higher-income countries provided their fair share in 2020 and pledged the full amount up to 2025: Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, France and Japan. 

ODI has also developed a new methodology to assess which countries should be contributing climate finance going forward, making a case for Qatar, Singapore, and Israel to make contributions.  

To read the full report visit: https://floodresilience.net 

About the Zurich Flood Resilience Alliance
As a member of the Zurich Flood Resilience Alliance, Mercy Corps is engaged in reducing the risk that floods pose to lives and livelihoods around the world. The Zurich Flood Resilience Alliance is a multi-sectoral partnership which brings together community programmes, new research, shared knowledge and evidence-based influencing to build community flood resilience in developed and developing countries. The Alliance helps people measure their resilience to floods and identify appropriate solutions before disaster strikes, and works to increase funding for flood resilience; strengthen global, national and subnational policies; and improve flood resilience practice. 

Find out more: https://floodresilience.net/zurich-flood-resilience-alliance/