Is Climate Finance Towards $100 Billion “New and Additional”?

We have now passed the 2020 deadline agreed in 2009 and later reaffirmed in the Paris Agreement for developed countries to mobilize $100 billion in “new and additional” climate finance. In this paper, we examine the extent to which development finance as a whole has increased since 2009 and interpret this as an upper limit for the amount of climate finance that can be described as “new and additional.” We analyse “total development finance” (official aid, multilateral contributions, and less-concessional finance, including export credits) and find that for countries included in the OECD-reported climate finance figure of $78.9 billion, there has been additional development finance of only $43.6 billion since 2009, meaning almost half of the OECD figure is not new and additional. Several countries have actually reduced overall finance levels relative to 2009. Looking only at aid-funded finance, France and Japan report large increases in bilateral climate aid but have not materially increased overall aid levels. We also note the importance of the US to further progress; it championed the target in 2009 and is responsible for almost half of developed-country carbon emissions to date but has made no additional financial contribution.