The Murky Paths of European Climate Aid

Rich countries had already committed to raising $100bn a year. At the COP29 climate summit, they were tasked with agreeing on a new target to scale this finance up further, in order to meet the challenges ahead.

However, climate finance is, in the words of one of the interviewees, a “wild west”. Governments use their own methodologies and come up with their own rules when reporting this information, and there is no universal agreement on what “climate finance” even is. Moreover, the European governments whose climate finance we were investigating are often not transparent about what they count as climate finance.

While much climate finance funds legitimate projects, there are also examples of funds being used in unusual ways. Money has gone to fossil fuels and airports, while some donors report finance that may never be spent and others hand out loans that ultimately see them making a profit. Understanding how and why this happens is vital as the importance of climate finance ramps up at COP29 and beyond.

Photo by IISD/ENB | Mike Muzurakis