Who pays the most to fight climate change?
The theory is very simple, we have to combat climate change, from our neighbor, through the multinationals or ourselves, but every action needs an economic contribution to be viable and as it always happens - the history of the economy attests - There is someone who makes a substantial profit from borrowing many others under the excuse of meeting objectives.
This time we look at a report recently published by the group of Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs) that, although all practice sustainable development, the fight against climate change and its benefits for being greener. The reality is that "Money" has no friends, and even less, if we let it.
From the report we can extract that last year finances increased 28% compared to the previous year. The World banks contributed $ 35.2 billion to finance the fight against climate change. A record! that if we add the last seven years, almost 194,000 million dollars have already been committed.
According to the report, financing for climate change is divided into two strands. The 27.9 billion dollars, that is, 79% of the total in 2022, was allocated to climate change mitigation projects aimed at reducing harmful emissions and curbing global warming in countries around the world, whether for developed countries. or not.
And the remaining 21%, or $ 7.4 billion, to direct financing for emerging and developing countries, investing in climate adaptation projects that help economies cope with the effects of climate change, such as unusual levels. rain, worsening droughts and extreme weather events.
In theory, up to here … We are doing well! But we actually stumbled across a graph that we don't like that much …
When pronounced with a «81% Investment loan», they actually mean that 81% of the economic contribution made in 2022 is relative investment loans. Come on, you have to return the money - we take this for granted - and surely they want to recover it in spades, but … Who has been awarded the most money?
If we observe a little, We can identify that developing countries or regions that suffer economic upheavals are the ones that will receive the most financing but at the same time, they are the ones that will get the most debt..
"Developing countries and economically unstable regions are the ones that will receive the most financing and, at the same time, are the ones that will get the most debt"
Well okay!… And what about the previous years? Because even such a high percentage of loans and not so much money were granted to developing countries. We leave you the values of the year 2016 and 2015:
Roughly and with an average estimate, we could say that 75% of the financing against the fight against climate change is loans.
If we do some more calculations and with reference to the total contributed (194,000 million dollars) applying that 75% on average, We will have an approximate debt of 145,000 million dollars that obviously someone will have to repay, perfectly understandable, but with interest! … And everything indicates that the weakest will pay more.
Here we should review Gunter Pauli's Blue Economy proposal.
According to John Roome, Principal Director of the World Bank …"Multilateral development banks are playing a key role in mobilizing private sector finance, which will be critical to achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement."
Recalling that as part of the Paris Agreement, developed countries were urged to increase their level of support with a concrete roadmap to achieve the goal of mobilizing $ 100 billion a year in climate finance by 2022 for the action against climate change in developing countries.
Of course, we are not economists and everyone can agree that we need to take action against climate change, but we get the feeling that the usual, the weakest, the developing countries are going to pay.
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