In 2009, high-income countries committed to supporting climate change adaptation and mitigation activities in low and middle-income countries. It was
agreed that they would provide scaled-up, new and additional finance, reaching USD 100 billion a year in 2020.
Rich countries have admitted that they missed this target, but as we document in this research, they also failed to ensure that climate finance was “new
and additional” to their support for development. In fact, most of the public climate finance reported by rich countries is taken directly from development
aid budgets. This means less support for health, education, women’s rights, poverty alleviation, and progress towards the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals.
By assessing the most up-to-date data reported to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), only 6% of the climate finance provided from 2011 to 2018 is seen to be new and additional to rich countries’ official development assistance commitments. Even under a weaker definition of additionality, 55% of the global North’s public climate finance is development finance being diverted towards climate change action.