Earlier this year, the IPPC published yet another report underscoring the fact that rapid climate action is needed to limit global warming and avoid further irreversible, devasting environmental impacts. Over the next decade, the report calls for urgent, unprecedented social and economic transitions to reduce emissions and enable climate resilient development for vulnerable people.

A key pillar of the UNFCCC was a commitment by industrialized nations to cover the incremental cost of climate change mitigation for developing countries. As part of this pledge, they agreed to mobilize $100 billion a year in climate finance by 2020 and maintain that level of funding up to 2025. While there are questions on whether this target has been met, climate finance has undeniably become one of the largest channels of wealth redistribution from developed to developing countries.

The massive floods, heat waves, raging wildfires, and devastating droughts of 2021 brought the present reality of climate change’s catastrophic impacts on people and ecosystems home to our doorsteps.