After having participated in the Pre-Cop in Milan, together with the Minister of Ecological Transition Roberto Cingolani, in an interview with Financial Times, the president of COP 26 Alok Sharma, just quotes Italy (together with France) like only two countries of the G7 who have not yet taken on new commitments on the loans to be provided to Developing countries for the fight against climate change. That is one of the most important points on which we discussed first in Milan and, in recent days, also during the parliamentary meeting in Rome. Let’s talk about that broken promise of one $ 100 billion mobilization per year from various sources, both public and private by 2020, for the measures of mitigation and adaptation. Commitment made to Copenhagen in 2009.
To stay at G7 and the words of the British minister on the new commitments, for example, the United States has promised to double the quota, bringing it from 5.7 billion (less than a quarter of what EU countries were already providing in 2019) to 11.4 billion. The UK promised 11.6 billion pounds (13.6 billion euros) between 2022 and 2026 and has pledged to dedicate at least 50% of the cost for adaptation.
Cingolani’s proposal waiting for Draghi – In Milan Cingolani spoke about it, recalling that Italy makes a contribution of 460 million (of Euro, ed) for developing countries through various channels. “What I will propose, and will be subject to the Government’s decision, is at least of double up. It could reach one billion “, said the minister, adding then:” Even if it doubles it would be few, but we must try“. So right now the issue is in the hands of the prime minister Mario Draghi, who even in recent weeks has spoken of “urgency”, explaining that “we must everyone do our part“. And it is from him that an announcement is expected, possibly also to G20 in Rome on October 30th, once the accounts are done at home (the funds for developing countries come from the Prime Minister and the Foreign Ministry). Also because that of not having made new commitments yet, it is not the only lack of Italy on the climate finance front for developing countries.
OECD data – In this regard, the most reliable data are from the OECD. The complete ones were released just under a year ago. Overall, funding went from $ 58.6 billion in 2016 to $ 71 billion in 2017, up to 78.9 of 2018. But recently there was an update: in 2019 it reached $ 79.6 billion. So there is growth (and it is 2%, due to the increase in public funding from multilateral institutions), but it is slower and slower since in the meantime bilateral public financing commitments and funds from private sources are decreasing. To date, therefore, to achieve the mobilization goal of 100 billion dollars in 2020, are needed approximately another 20 billion.
In a recent BBC interview, Amar Bhattacharya, author of a report by the Independent Expert Group on the subject, explained that within the G7, the largest donors are Germany, Japan and France, then there are United Kingdom and Canada and, finally, the United States and Italy (with $ 0.6 billion a year). But behind these rankings are complicated assessments. First, because the largest economies often provide most of the climate finance in absolute terms, but not in relation to their economic size. And also because there are countries that supply grants only, while others also matter loans to developing countries, which must be refunded. Italy, for example, it is among the donor countries that provide one higher percentage of grants (94% between 2015-2016 and 92% between 2017 and 2019, compared to an average for OECD countries of 20% in the period 2013-2018). France, Japan and Germany, yes, they are among the top donors, but they have provided most of their funding through loans.
L‘Italy under its own “fair share” – On the other hand, as the think tank recalls there, at Cop21 in Paris in 2015 Italy has made a commitment to mobilize 4 billion dollars to finance 2020 public and private mobilized through public interventions. So “therefore for the 6 years from 2015 to 2020 inclusive, which would be on average 666 million dollars a year “. Today we are at about 2.5 billion taken from allocations in the budget law and reconversions of the development cooperation budget.
Germany, for example, which had made the same commitment, managed to mobilize 5 billion. According to Ecco “in theory, matching the current commitments of the United Kingdom and Germany (adjusted for GDP) for Italy would mean committing respectively € 1.8 billion and € 2.1 billion a year“. The British think tank Odi (Overseas Development Institute) has come up with a proposal to succeed define the “right share” with which each of the 23 industrialized countries of the Framework Convention on the Climate (Unfccc) that have committed themselves to allocate the 100 billion dollars a year. In the calculation, the Co2 emissions for the period 1990-2019, GDP and population in 2020. According to the Odes, only Germany, Norway and Sweden they are contributing as they should, while Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Portugal and the United States are at less than 20% of their respective ‘fair shares’. That for Italy is 4.7 billion dollars, but us we only contributed 25% of that share ($ 1.2 billion between 2017 and 2018). The US is just 4%. I am, in fact, tail light even in absolute terms, contributing less than France, Germany, Japan or the United Kingdom, despite their economy being larger than the other four combined.