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Financing climate justice

By Friends of the Earth International

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OVERVIEW

The global North is responsible for climate change and owes a climate debt to the global South. Climate finance is about the payment of that debt, as well as enabling developing countries to adopt low carbon societies and increase communities’ resilience to climate change. This summary explains how the climate debt can be paid.

The pressure to agree lasting decisions about limiting dangerous climate change is intensifying, as 2012 - the end of the first phase of the Kyoto Protocol on climate change - draws ever closer. Financial transfers for Southern countries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to the impacts of climate change are a key part of current climate negotiations. Yet government negotiations on climate finance seem to be deadlocked, with the global North insisting on a self-interested neoliberal approach to selecting and financing climate change measures, which includes the use of carbon offsetting mechanisms, and channelling climate finance through the World Bank rather than the UNFCCC. These ‘false solutions' are designed to enable Northern governments to leverage private finance and avoid difficult decisions about domestic emissions reductions they are already committed to. But the global North is responsible for climate change and owes a climate debt to the global South. Climate finance is about the payment of that debt, as well as enabling developing countries to adopt low carbon societies and increase communities' resilience to climate change. Measures to address climate change have to be based on a fundamental transition to new, equitable and sustainable societies if they are to succeed, and climate finance must be firmly based on the principles of climate justice and people's sovereignty.