Australia falls $2.6bn short of UN pledge

Australia should be paying an extra $2.6bn to the UN’s $US100bn climate finance target, after falling short on a previous international pledge, an environmental group has claimed.

Some of the world leaders attending the COP27 climate conference, in Egypt's Red Sea resort city of Sharm el-Sheikh, on Monday. Picture: AFP

Australia should be paying an extra $US1.7bn ($2.6bn) to the UN’s $US100bn climate finance target, after falling short on a previous international pledge, environmental group Carbon Brief has claimed.

In a just-released analysis of countries financial continuations to the international agreed target, Australia has paid only 38 per cent of its fair share, Carbon Brief said, ranking it third worst country behind the US and Canada.

Carbon Brief, a British climate investigation group, said on Monday, the opening day of the COP27 conference in Sharm el-Sheikh, that the US should be paying nearly $US40bn towards the $US100bn climate-finance target. It provided only $US8bn in 2020.

The report says: “Other laggards include the UK, Canada and Australia, which all made smaller financial contributions to the internationally agreed target than their shares of historical emissions.’’

The issue looks like being one of the biggest debates at COP27 with the shortfall of the $100bn added to the recently added agenda item of “loss and damage” claims by smaller, poorer nations.

The climate finance question centres around the responsibility of larger, more industrialised nations on the impact of climate change and its financial assistance to less-developed and vulnerable countries.

Developed nations have previously resisted paying for loss and damage, fearing unlimited ­financial exposure but smaller nations will seize on the Carbon Brief analysis to push for more ­urgent monies.

The analysis looked at an agreement made at COP15 in 2009 to deliver the $US100bn ­climate financing by 2020, based on each OECD industrialised country’s historical emissions.

The report says the US is responsible for 52 per cent of historical emissions contributed by the OECD nations.

Big emitter China is not included in the formula because at the time of the agreement, it was not an OECD member.

The report says: “Canada gave 37 per cent of its fair share and was $US3.3bn short, while Australia gave 38 per cent of its fair share and fell short by $US1.7bn. The UK gave 76 per cent of its fair share, falling short by $US1.4bn.”

It added that Germany, France and Japan gave proportionally more than their contribution to historical warming but their finance was mainly in the form of loans, not grants.

A further analysis of contributions made in 2020 by Carbon Brief showed that Australia, along with Greece, Canada, the US and Canada paid far less than the agreed formula.

Australia’s contribution was just over a third of what it should be paying, Carbon Brief said.