Saudi Arabia's energy minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman said today that his country has chosen a "different" and more direct approach to providing finance to help countries recover from climate-related disasters.
Speaking at the Saudi-Arab-African Economic conference in Riyadh on Thursday, Prince Abdulaziz said that the country had its own tools and organisations when it comes to helping developing countries. "We want to [provide funding] bilaterally… to make sure that we are accountable for what we promise, and that we can see the deliverables of what we have promised," he said.
This is because current pledges and initiatives, including the UN Green Climate Fund, are simply not living up to their billing, he said. "I asked so many of my colleagues in Africa: Have you received anything from that fund? I have yet to find somebody who [felt] the impact of it."
The GCF, the world's largest dedicated climate fund, has committed $13.5bn in more than 200 projects in developing countries, $51.8bn with co-financing, but have faced some criticism about its lack of speed and complexity.
Prince Abdulaziz also pointed to the missed $100bn/yr climate finance goal. "The jury is still out", he said, about whether a pledge made by wealthy nations in 2009 to provide $100bn/yr in mitigation — cutting emissions — and adaptation finance to developing countries by 2020 will finally be met this year. Adaptation refers to adjustments to avoid global warming impacts.
"Some people claim that $83bn of it was spent, while a lot of others argue that it has only ever reached [a maximum of] $22bn over the past 15 years or so," he said. OECD data showed that developed countries provided $83.3bn in climate finance in 2020, including $31.4bn in bilateral public finance. But developing countries have long complained about the lack of access to the funding.
He also flagged talks around the establishment of a new loss and damage fund, as agreed last year's at Cop 27.
A transitional committee that was tasked with working out the details last week agreed on recommendations for its set-up, although some committee members expressed reservations on the final text. Divisions remain on who should contribute to the fund, with some parties suggesting that the list of donors should include countries whose economic circumstances have changed since the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was established in 1992.
"We have now an issue with regard to loss and damage, and again, the jury is still out," Prince Abdulaziz said. He highlighted, as many others have in the wake of the final loss and damage committee, the high costs that come with the decision to have the World Bank host the fund, at least temporarily.
Saudi Arabia in January committed $1bn to help Pakistan recover from the devastating floods that submerged around one third of the country in the third quarter of last year, and killed more than 1,700 people, according to the country's National Disaster Management Authority.
The kingdom has also pledged significant sums to help in the aftermath of other past disasters in Bangladesh, Sudan and Yemen.
Fellow Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC) member the UAE, which will be hosting this year's Cop 28 UN climate summit that begins this month, has also engaged in similar direct and bilateral climate funding in the shape of a $4.5bn pledge, announced in September, to accelerate the development of clean energy projects in Africa.
