Countries attending the COP31 climate summit agreed to include the two-year Climate Finance Work Programme on the official agenda.
Down To Earth reported that the decision came on November 9 as delegates gathered for the opening plenary in an effort to advance discussions on scaling up money for developing nations.
The summit runs until November 20.
Disagreements over climate finance quickly emerged as delegates tackled the agenda items for the two-week meeting.
The Work Programme originated at COP30 to push forward talks on financial support. However, negotiations hit immediate roadblocks over other funding proposals.
Adaptation Finance Proposal Dropped
Delegates dropped a separate proposal to include tripling adaptation finance as an agenda item after failing to reach a consensus. India expressed regret over the exclusion of the adaptation target. Meanwhile, the European Union raised concerns about how delegates treated the Work Programme during the opening discussions.
The funding gap remains substantial as talks continue. Projections from the 2026 Adaptation Gap Report by the United Nations Environment Programme indicate that developing nations are going to require $305 billion on a yearly basis for climate adaptation by 2035. In 2024, international public adaptation finance provided by developed countries to developing ones amounted to a range of just $28.2 billion to $31.7 billion.
UN climate chief Simon Stiell addressed the high-level ministerial dialogue on climate finance on November 13. He warned that simply meeting numerical financial targets did not guarantee that the actual needs of developing countries were being met.
“meeting financial targets did not necessarily mean developing countries’ needs were being met,” Stiell warned at the seventh biennial high-level ministerial dialogue on climate finance.
Stiell urged that the Baku-to-Belém Roadmap be utilized to make the $1.3 trillion annual finance objective a reality. Negotiations are scheduled to continue toward the summit’s conclusion on November 20.
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