Rich nations say they're spending billions to fight climate change. Some money is going to strange places. https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/climate-change-finance/
Developed nations have pledged to funnel a combined total of $100 billion a year toward this goal, which they affirmed during climate talks in Paris in 2015.
Funding for the five projects (a retailer store, coastal hotel expeansion, a film on a love story, a coal plant, ) totaled $2.6 billion, and all four countries counted their backing as so-called “climate finance” – grants, loans, bonds, equity investments and other contributions meant to help developing nations reduce emissions and adapt to a warming world...nothing prevented the governments that funded them from reporting them as such to the United Nations and counting them toward their giving total.
The U.N. Climate Change secretariat told Reuters it is up to the countries themselves to decide whether to impose uniform standards. “This is the wild, wild west of finance,” said Mark Joven, Philippines Department of Finance undersecretary, who represents the country at U.N. climate talks. “Essentially, whatever they call climate finance is climate finance.”
Some climate finance is going to projects primarily focused on economic expansion, and that is not the intention of the funding agreement. That results in less money going to efforts that truly help the climate.
Search our database of questionable climate funding https://www.reuters.com/graphics/CLIMATE-CHANGE/FINANCE/gdvzqlyjqpw/ documentation for 74 contributions featured as examples or summary totals in the Reuters special report. The financing includes at least $9 billion that will continue reliance on fossil fuels, more than $776.3 million in airport expansions and more than $500 million in contributions that were later canceled with no funds paid out. Reporters from Reuters and Big Local News, a non-profit journalism organization at Stanford University, examined thousands of records countries submitted to the U.N. Climate Change secretariat to document contributions from 2015 to 2020.