Thread by @EdConwaySky

CLIMATE FINANCE THREAD
Let's start with a simple question: how much is UK donating to poorer countries to help with climate change?
It's an important question given rich countries collective pledges are falling short of goals. That's been one of the big disappointments of #COP26

So: is the UK a leader or laggard when it comes to the $100bn?
Short answer: we give surprisingly little, given our typical leadership role in international development. But getting to the bottom of this involves diving deep inside a climate finance wormhole. Deep breath...

Let's start with the big picture. The idea behind climate finance is that rich countries should help poorer countries both to adapt to higher temperatures and to reduce their reliance on fossil fuels.
The target was to get to $100bn a year by 2020.
We failed.
Might hit it by 2023

From this you might have assumed that all of that $100bn a year is effectively a gift from rich govts to poor govts to help them build flood defences/solar panels, fight famine and other climate-related issues. And you’re partly right. But only partly. Let’s focus on 2018…

Break down that $78bn total climate finance in 2018 and you find that a good chunk of it is private finance, not govt.
Public finance accounts for only $61.6bn.
Fair enough. But means even when govts hit $100bn in reality public transfer will be well below that...

Now break down the $61.6bn from govts and you see that actually the majority of it is not grants (eg gifts) but LOANS.
Rich countries expect this money back.
Again, fine - often aid happens via loans. But it's quite different from the big headlines you usually see re the $100bn

Anyway, all of this 👆is the big picture.
Total OECD climate finance.
Begging the question: where does the UK fit here?
Annoyingly there is no public database, at least that I've found, which breaks down donors year by year. So I had to do some sniffing.

If you want to find out the UK's contribution you need to dig through its submission to the UN, a dense but actually quite interesting document you can find here: unfccc.int/sites/default/…

Long story short, in 2018 the UK's contribution was $1.6bn, actually just below that.
This is oddly low. The UK is 5% of OECD GDP, so if it were giving in line with its size it should be more like $3bn. Why do we give so little?

I dug a little deeper and it turns out the UK excludes the money we give via multilateral banks like the World Bank from its total.
But even so: 5% of the OECD donations minus multilateral bank money comes out at $1.8bn. So even on this benchmark, UK looks slightly stingy.

I was a bit surprised by this.
Given the 0.7% GDP aid target up until recently, I'd expected UK would be punching above its weight here. Turns out we are giving slightly less than you'd expect given our size. And this goes for most years 2013-2018

An official told me that while most other countries give via loans, the UK is unusual in the extent to which it gives via grants.
But still: the quantum is lower than one might have expected.
This is somewhat awkward given we're encouraging everyone else to give more at #COP26

The problem, as with so much else about finance, is that the numbers are hideously complex and opaque. It took me quite a lot of digging to get even vaguely comparable figs for the UK vs the rest of the OECD. It's similarly tricky finding numbers on where this cash goes.

Consider: while the OECD provides a regional breakdown of where climate finance goes, it doesn't do a country-by-country breakdown. This is significant. The majority goes to Asia. And China is one of the potential recipient countries. Begging the q: how much is going to China?

Finding answers to questions like this is not easy. But it matters. The amount of money in climate finance is only going to increase in the coming years.
But the quality of data we have is appalling.
I wish #COP26 wld try to do something abt provision of decent climate data.