PARIS (dpa-AFX) - The finance under a goal to mobilize $100 billion a year by 2020 to help the developing world address both the causes and impacts of climate change is flowing at significant levels, US Secretary of State John Kerry said on Sunday.
At the weekend in Paris, the United States and Switzerland hosted senior officials from 18 developed countries to discuss their collaborative efforts to scale up climate finance for developing nations, and to provide increased transparency on their progress.
'Our countries are working together towards a goal that President Obama and other heads of state set nearly six years ago in Copenhagen: to mobilize - from public and private sources - $100 billion a year by 2020 to help the developing world address both the causes and impacts of climate change,' Kerry said in a statement. This goal was set in the context of meaningful climate mitigation actions and transparency on implementation.
Today, at the halfway mark to 2020, the contributing nations are well on their way to achieving this $100 billion goal. Data from sources such as the World Bank and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) makes clear that climate finance is flowing at significant levels, and there is ongoing work to produce improved estimates in the coming weeks. Kerry emphasized that all the donors have a stake in enabling climate finance to continue to flow at scale.
Kerry warned that the threat posed by climate change is global, and added that without global cooperation, the impacts will be devastating - and they will extend to every country on Earth.
The ambitious and durable agreement the global community aims to conclude later this year in Paris must be consistent with economic realities in the next decade and beyond, according to Kerry. The scale of the climate change challenge demands an effective global partnership that brings to bear resources from all available channels to assist those most in need. Continued collaboration on climate finance, like the discussions this weekend, is critical to meeting this global challenge, he noted.
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