Climate cash for developing world set to meet U.N. 2020 goal

(The GuardianReuters, 23 Nov 2018) Rich countries in 2009 agreed to raise $100 billion a year by 2020 to back efforts by vulnerable, poorer states to shift their economies onto a greener path.

Cash from wealthy countries to help the developing world tackle climate change has risen substantially in recent years, putting them on track to meet a politically important 2020 U.N. target to go green and adapt to wild weather, analysts said on Friday.

The amount rich nations provided themselves and raised from the private sector in 2016 exceeded $70 billion, according to data in a biennial U.N. assessment. Government funding accounted for about $55 billion of that, a jump of 30 percent in two years.

At U.N. climate talks in 2009, rich countries agreed to raise $100 billion a year by 2020 to back efforts by vulnerable, poorer states to shift their economies onto a greener path and adapt to more extreme weather and rising seas.

Analysts said the figures were a positive signal ahead of next month's U.N. negotiations, tasked with finalising rules to put a global accord to tackle climate change into practice.

Joe Thwaites, a researcher at the World Resources Institute, said climate finance was a "critically important part" of the 2015 Paris Agreement, because poorer countries need the money to ramp up efforts to reduce heat-trapping emissions.

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The GuardianReuters, 23 Nov 2018: Climate cash for developing world set to meet U.N. 2020 goal