New numbers on Climate Finance for EU Member States

For the first time individual numbers for EU member states have been calculated from the joint commitment made by developed countries of mobilizing $100 billion in climate finance to developing countries. Topping the list is Germany which needs to contribute 20 per cent of the EU total. France and the UK come in second with 13 per cent each. Sweden comes in tenth with 2 per cent of the EU commitment.

Climate finance is crucial for developing countries’ possibilities to adapt to climate change and to make possible a low carbon development. Annual need is estimated at several hundred billion US dollars annually, but the existing commitment only extends to $100 billion.

– So far developed countries have largely failed to provide new and additional funds for climate finance. This new calculation on EU member states’ shares remove one uncertainty and governments present at the UN climate change meeting in Warsaw, COP19, no longer have any reason to further delay the provision of adequate funding for climate finance, says Petter Lydén, Policy Adviser at Diakonia.

Using official data on member states’ economies and greenhouse gas emissions, a distribution key developed by the European Commission is used to calculate the share of each EU member state of the $100 billion commitment of climate finance to developing countries in 2020. As finance needs to be scaled up until 2020, the calculation also draws the trajectories for each member state, with annual sums until 2020. Topping the list is Germany which needs to contribute 20 per cent of the EU total. France and the UK come in second with 13 per cent each. Sweden comes in tenth with 2 per cent of the EU commitment.

Details of the calculation and individual sums for each EU country are available in the attached background paper.

The calculated sums do not correspond to the actual need for climate finance, as the need is far greater than the $100 billion commitment made by developed countries.

For more information, please contact:
Petter Lydén, Policy Adviser Climate Change, +46765011740, petter.lyden@diakonia.se