NEW YORK: Highlighting climate change’s disproportionate impact on poor nations, Pakistan called on the developed countries to fulfil a $100 billion commitment to help developing nations in reducing emissions and adapting to global warming.
“Enhanced commitments for annual climate finance from the floor of $100 billion goal must be achieved in the new Collective Quantified Goal on Climate Finance by 2024,” Ambassador Aamir Khan, deputy permanent representative of Pakistan to the UN, said during a virtual briefing on the 13th Petersberg Climate Dialogue, a German initiative for discussing concrete steps towards overcoming the crisis.
“Developing countries, whilst not responsible for the majority of emissions today, too often bear the brunt of climate change impacts,” he said, adding the challenges these nations face must be recognised.
In this regard, the envoy welcomed the commitments reached at the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference, more commonly referred to as COP26, including on at least doubling climate financing for adaptation, saying further action is needed to ensure a greater balance between support for mitigation and adaptation in climate finance.
“Concessional finance must be significantly scaled up and climate finance should not be a source of additional external debt for developing countries,” Ambassador Khan said, while stressing the need for establishing an independent loss and damage financial facility.
He also called for simplification and acceleration of existing procedures to access financing for climate projects, such as from the Green Climate Fund and demanding its early replenishment.
Despite the decreasing price of renewable energy, the Pakistani envoy emphasised the need for addressing the problem of access and transfer of technology to accelerate the deployment of renewables, while taking into consideration the diversity of national situations, priorities, policies, specific needs and challenges, and capacities of developing countries, including their energy mix and energy systems.
