(Dubai) The Vice President of the United States, Kamala Harris, announced on Saturday at COP28 in Dubai a contribution of three billion dollars to the Green Climate Fund, making up for years of non-contribution from the country richest in the world.
“I am proud to announce a new commitment of $3 billion to the Green Climate Fund, which helps developing countries invest in resilience, clean energy and nature-based solutions,” said Kamala Harris , dispatched to the 28e UN climate change conference in place of President Joe Biden.
Washington’s last contribution announcement, also for an amount of $3 billion, dates from 2014 and came from then-Democratic President Barack Obama, while many other countries have renewed their contributions in the meantime.
“We are at a pivotal moment. Our collective action or, worse, our inaction, will have consequences for billions of people for decades,” declared the vice-president, who arrived in the United Arab Emirates the same day for the conference.
This announcement, even if it is conditional on the perilous approval of the American Congress, was a long-awaited signal to hope to ease tensions between the North and the South on international finance, which constitute a major node in the UN negotiations on the fight against climate change.
If the promise is kept, the United States would become the largest contributor to the fund in absolute value with $6 billion. But the United Kingdom (5.1 billion, according to the NGO NRDC), Germany (4.9 billion) and France (4.6 billion) contribute much more, in proportion to their population.
Born in 2010, the Green Climate Fund is the largest in operation today.
It finances solar panels in Pakistan as well as agricultural projects in the Philippines or any other related initiatives aimed at helping developing countries do without fossil fuels, or adapt to a more dangerous climate.
According to the fund, more than four billion dollars have been disbursed to date and 13.5 billion committed. But his ambitions are greater: he wants to boost his capital, currently 17 billion dollars, to bring it to 50 billion by 2030.
Since the Paris Agreement in 2015, it has played a key role in fulfilling part of the pledge by developed countries to provide $100 billion a year in climate aid, a promise that was probably only met last year, and became a red rag in international negotiations.