{"id":48542,"date":"2023-06-07T11:33:24","date_gmt":"2023-06-07T10:33:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.climatechangenews.com\/?p=48542"},"modified":"2023-06-07T11:33:24","modified_gmt":"2023-06-07T10:33:24","slug":"china-climate-finance-global-south-southsouth-xi-jinping","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.climatechangenews.com\/2023\/06\/07\/china-climate-finance-global-south-southsouth-xi-jinping\/","title":{"rendered":"Confusion surrounds China\u2019s pledged climate finance towards the Global South\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"

The delivery of a multi-billion climate fund pledged by China nearly eight years ago to support the Global South remains \u201cunclear\u201d, experts have told Climate Home News.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>Some experts suggested that China has \u201conly delivered 10%\u201d of the China South-South Climate Cooperation fund since it was announced eight years ago, calling the pace \u201cquite slow\u201d. <\/span><\/p>\n

Others said it would be \u201chard to tell\u201d how much of the pledge has been fulfilled due to a lack of official updates.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Li Shuo, senior global policy advisor at Greenpeace East Asia, described the fund\u2019s details as \u201cconfusing\u201d but believed that China \u201chas not delivered as much as it promised\u201d.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In 2015, China’s President Xi Jinping announced the fund during a state visit to the USA, months before unprecedented US-Chinese climate cooperation helped the world agree to the Paris agreement.<\/p>\n

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Xi Jinping and Barack Obama in California in 2015<\/p><\/div>\n

\u00a0At the time, <\/span>Xi\u202f<\/span>said<\/span><\/a>\u202fthat China would \u201cmake available\u201d 20 billion yuan ($3.1 billion) to help other developing countries tackle climate change. But he did not set a deadline for the fund\u2019s delivery.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>Delivery \u2018not as promising\u2019<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/h3>\n

China\u2019s climate envoy Xie Zhenhua said at Cop27 that China had provided\u202f<\/span>2 billion yuan<\/span><\/a> ($310 million)\u202fto other developing countries, which are otherwise known as the Global South, to reduce their emissions and adapt to climate change.<\/span><\/p>\n

Xie did not give more information about the figure. But E3G, a thinktank focused on climate change policy, interpreted Xie\u2019s words as an update on the China South-South Climate Cooperation Fund.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It said in a recent analysis that China\u2019s climate finance to the Global South \u201c<\/span>falls short<\/span><\/a>\u201d of its own pledge because the nation has delivered just one-tenth in seven years.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Byford Tsang, senior policy advisor at E3G, told Climate Home News that \u201cat the current pace, I think it would take quite a long time [for China] to fulfil its pledge\u201d.<\/span> But he acknowledged that, as a developing country, China is not obliged to provide any formal climate finance.<\/span><\/p>\n

Although it is possible that Beijing would give \u201can injection\u201d to the fund to accelerate its delivery, \u201cbased on what has been achieved so far, it was not as promising as people were thinking during the start\u201d, Tsang continued.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>Institutional challenges<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/h3>\n

\u00a0<\/span>Tsang of E3G pointed to \u201cinstitutional challenges\u201d as reasons for the fund\u2019s sluggish progress because it is managed by different ministries, which makes it complicated to disperse.<\/span><\/p>\n

According to a\u202f<\/span>study<\/span><\/a> \u202fpublished by China\u2019s National Centre for Climate Change Strategy and International Cooperation (NCSC), an affiliation to the Ministry of Ecology and Environment \u201cmultiple departments\u201d are \u201cinvolved\u201d in China\u2019s south-south cooperation on climate change.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

“<\/span>Apart from the newly established Ministry of Ecology and Environment (established in 2018), it also involves China International Development Cooperation Agency, the ministries of commerce, finance and foreign affairs, as well as the National Development and Reform Commission,\u201d the study said.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It added that the China South-South Climate Cooperation had yet to be set up for various reasons, including lack of coordination \u2013 a fact that \u201chad affected the progress of the south-south climate change cooperation and international reputation\u201d of China.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cA common understanding is that the promised amount would need to be distributed by the fund. If the fund has not been established, then its delivery is an open question,\u201d Li of Greenpeace East Asia told Climate Home News.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>He said the overall situation is \u201cunclear\u201d because China has not reported the fund\u2019s progress regularly. \u201cOn the other hand, China is not obliged to give such reports internationally,\u201d he added.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Duan Hongbo is a professor at the School of Economics and Management at the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences. He said that<\/span>\u00a0the politics and attitude of potential recipient countries \u2013 most of which are the least developed in the world \u2013 also play a role. For example, some countries constantly change their points of contact and others \u201care more interested in projects that would boost their economy than combat climate change.\u201d The Covid-19 pandemic also delayed global cooperation, he said.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But some observers urge China to make bigger strides. Belinda Sch\u00e4pe, policy adviser at E3G, told Climate Home News: \u201cChina hasn\u2019t put a timeline on the fund. But for it to actually have an impact, it should happen faster.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

As China sees the south-south climate cooperation as a way to \u201cportray itself as the responsible leader power\u201d, to keep that leadership of the developing world and its credibility as the climate leader, accelerating the delivery of its climate fund is the \u201crational next step\u201d, she added.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Ten-hundred-thousand<\/h3>\n

The Chinese government has not specified how the fund would be spent, but experts from a Chinese state-affiliated thinktank NCSC said China has been funnelling it through the so-called \u201cTen-Hundred-Thousand\u201d projects announced by President Xi at the opening ceremony of the 2015 Paris climate talks.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Xi\u202f<\/span>said<\/span><\/a>\u202fthat from 2016, China would \u201claunch cooperation projects to set up 10 pilot low-carbon industrial parks and start 100 [emissions reduction] and [adapting to climate change] programs in other developing countries and provide them with 1,000 training opportunities on climate change\u201d.\u202f<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Xi\u2019s statement clarified the scope of the fund,\u202f<\/span>wrote<\/span><\/a>\u202fLi Yan, an NCSC analyst, in a 2020 report.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

China said in its most recent climate change \u201c<\/span>white paper<\/span><\/a>\u201d that by July 2022, it had signed 43 agreements on climate change cooperation with 38 developing countries, agreed to build low-carbon industrial parks in Laos, Cambodia and Seychelles, and carried out 40 emissions reduction and adaptating to climate change projects in more than 30 nations.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The paper said China had allocated 1.2 billion yuan ($170 million) to the south-south climate change cooperation by last July but did not explain whether the money had been dispersed through the fund. It also remains unclear if Xie\u2019s statement was an update for this figure.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

A fund \u2018out of goodwill\u2019<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/h3>\n

Developed countries<\/span><\/a>\u202f– including the US, Canada, Australia, Japan and much of Western Europe — have been condemned for failing to live up to their long-standing promise of providing $100 billion a year to developing countries by 2020 to help the latter reduce and adapt to the impact of climate change.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The pledge was made in 2009 to reflect wealthy nations\u2019 historical responsibility for causing climate change during their industrialisation. They are responsible for\u202f<\/span>half<\/span><\/a>\u202fof all historical carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions globally despite always being a small minority of its population.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n