Creative Accounting: Wealthy Countries and International Institutions Routinely Exaggerate the Climate Finance They Provide
In 2021, developed countries came under fire at COP26 for not living up to their climate finance commitments. Numbers from their own organization, the OECD, showed clearly that they were off track to meet the $100 bn target in 2020.
But now the problem has disappeared – – at least according to the latest figures from OECD1 which show that developed countries provided and mobilized $115.9 bn as climate finance to developing countries in 2022.
Wealthy countries’ reporting of climate finance can be criticized from many angles. Firstly, it includes loans, often at market rates of return: Oxfam2 has calculated that the actual support is only about a third of the OECD numbers. Secondly, most of the reported climate finance is non-additional to the official development assistance, as shown by CARE.
But on top of these issues, the reporting is fundamentally flawed as there are no rules on what constitutes climate finance, and rich countries and international organizations utilize this to inflate their numbers. Earlier this year it was revealed that the UK4 has reclassified money for humanitarian work and development activities to make it look as if it were delivering on its climate finance pledge.
Read and download the full briefing paper below:
Creative Accounting
Wealthy Countries and International Institutions Routinely Exaggerate the Climate Finance They Provide