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Climate finance shadow report 2023: assessing the delivery of the $100 billion commitment

Only $11.5bn (£9.2bn) of climate finance from rich countries in 2020 was devoted to helping poor countries adapt to extreme weather, despite increasing incidences of climate-related disaster, according to this report from the Oxfam.

In 2009, high-income countries committed in the Copenhagen Accords to mobilize US$100 billion a year by 2020 in climate finance for low- and middle-income countries. Oxfam reported on the progress of this commitment in 2016, 2018 and 2020. This year’s report finds that high-income countries have not only failed to deliver on their commitment, but also – as in previous years – generous accounting practices have allowed them to overstate the level of support they have actually provided. Moreover, much of the finance has been provided as loans, which means that it risks increasing the debt burden of the countries it is supposed to help.