Developing Countries Demand No-Strings Handouts From UN Green Climate Fund

The 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26) commences on October 31st in Glasgow, Scotland. This summit meeting of world leaders is a follow-up to the 2015 conference in Paris, which resulted in the one-sided Paris Climate Agreement that China has gamed. “We’re going to be there with bells on,” U.S. President Joe Biden said during his September White House meeting with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who will be hosting the Glasgow meeting. As of the writing of this article, it does not appear that China’s President Xi Jinping will be attending in person, with or without bells on.

Massive wealth redistribution scheme

One of the anticipated discussion topics in Glasgow will be more funding of the UN Green Climate Fund (GCF) by industrialized countries that are considered wealthy by comparison with the rest of the world. Approximately $80 billion of the $100 billion annual contribution target, which was set to have been met in 2020, has been delivered so far. Not only are so-called "developing" countries pressing for "rich" countries to make up that gap promptly. The developing countries are demanding far more in redistribution of wealth to fill their coffers, with essentially no strings attached that would require them to meet firm national decarbonization targets. The Green Climate Fund was established as part of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. It describes itself as “the world’s largest climate fund, mandated to support developing countries raise and realize their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) ambitions towards low-emissions, climate-resilient pathways.” The Nationally Determined Contributions are supposed to embody objectives by each country, as part of their participation in the Paris Climate Agreement, to reduce national emissions and adapt to the impacts of climate change. After being spurned by the Trump administration, which correctly considered the GCF to be a massive wealth redistribution scheme, the GCF has received pledges of financial support from the Biden administration. “The Biden-Harris Administration will examine how best to reengage with the GCF and work to ensure this important institution is adequately funded and equipped to serve the Paris Agreement,” a Biden administration spokesperson said.

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$100 billion in annual climate finance for developing countries

President Biden’s climate czar John Kerry promised to restore the funding to the GCF that had been scrapped by the Trump administration. Kerry said this would be “just the beginning of what we intend to do.” Kerry, who loves to fly around in fossil fuel-guzzling private airplanes, added that “President Biden knows we need to contribute going forward, and even now we have started to consider exactly how to provide scaled-up resources to the GCF.” Yannick Glemarec, executive director of the Green Climate Fund, said that U.S. reengagement “will send an extraordinarily positive signal” to spur accelerated financial support for the fund’s projects. But GCF whistleblowers are advising the Biden administration to spend Americans' money elsewhere. Whistleblowers have complained about integrity issues at the GCF in vetting projects for funding and about political interference in what should be purely technical decisions. One of these whistleblowers, quoted by Climate Home News, said that “There was inappropriate pressure to approve projects which could harm people.” “We don’t believe the GCF will ever be able to meet its mandate,” another whistleblower said. “I am of the view that we should be thinking about other ways to deliver climate finance to some countries.” Such concerns have not fazed either the Biden administration or the UN’s senior leadership. UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, in his remarks Tuesday at this week’s UN General Assembly High-Level Meeting on Delivering Climate Action, said that “the developed world must urgently meet its commitment of $100 billion in annual climate finance for developing countries.” He told reporters the same day that he is looking for higher contributions than that in the coming years, which he would like to see provided more in the form of grants than loans.

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China, the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases, is trying to hide behind the label of “developing country”

Some developing countries are pushing for as much as $750 billion a year in contributions from the "rich" developed countries by 2025. Guterres and other supporters of the Green Climate Fund do not appear bothered by objections from various developing countries to any decarbonization conditions imposed on their domestic development entities seeking to access GCF funding. GCF Board members from some of these countries are using their clout on the Board to back such objections in strident terms. For example, GCF Board member Ayman Shasly of Saudi Arabia described the imposition of a decarbonization timetable condition as “blackmail.” Shasly accused the GCF of being “manipulated by [developed countries] pushing their own agenda onto the fund.” The developing countries and their left-wing supporters crying “equity” and “climate justice” are the ones seeking to manipulate the GCF into acceding to their demands. Yan Ren, the GCF Board member from China, which is absurdly categorized as one of the GCF Board representatives of developing countries, said, “We should not impose conditions on developing countries to force them to achieve certain targets. There is no one size fits all on fossil fuels.” China, the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases, is trying to hide behind the label of “developing country” to avoid accountability for its continued increase in fossil fuel production and use, including coal. “Last year, China built more than three times more new coal power capacity than all other countries in the world combined,” the New York Times reported on September 21, 2021. This year, China’s Communist regime has ordered all coal mines in the country to operate at full capacity and has announced plans to build dozens more new coal-fired power plants. In short, so-called developing countries claim entitlement to developed countries’ money without having to meet any decarbonization target conditions. Throwing hundreds of billions of dollars down the potentially bottomless sinkhole of the poorly run UN Green Climate Fund will prove to be an enormous waste of money, time and energy.