Funds flow freely to wage war but scrutinized for climate adaptation: Maldives

ANKARA

Maldives on Tuesday called for a “stronger” climate action with “more” climate financing to help small nations in their efforts to mitigate the climate change crisis, saying funds flow freely to wage war but scrutinized for climate adaptation.

“We see funds flowing freely to wage war, but scrutinized when it's for climate adaptation, we need to reprioritize, and revise the international financial system. We must choose the path that changes lives, not the climate,” Maldives’ President Mohamed Muizzu said while addressing the COP29 in Azerbaijan’s capital Baku.

He added that it is the lack of finance that inhibits the “ambitions” of small countries to protect themselves from the climate change ravages.

“The new climate finance goal must reflect the true scale of the climate crisis," he said, adding: “The need is in trillions, not billions. It must consider the special circumstances of small island developing states, it must include adaptation, mitigation and loss and damage and increase contributions to it.”

As the world approaches the next round of nationally determined contributions, he said the developed nations must close the emissions and finance gap.

‘Death traps’

Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said that debt cannot become the “acceptable new normal” in climate financing and called for redefining the framework to “effectively” meet the needs of vulnerable countries.

Addressing a Climate Finance Round Table Conference organized by Pakistan on the sidelines of the COP29, he said climate financing in the form of loans augments the developing countries’ debt and pushes them towards “mounting debt traps” which he referred to as “death traps.”

“Despite years of promises and commitments, the gaps are growing, leading to aggregate barriers in achieving objectives of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC),” he warned.

Calling climate financing an “urgent need of the hour,” Sharif said developing nations need an estimated $6.8 trillion by 2030 to implement less than half of their current Nationally Determined Contributions.

Referring to the 2022 devastating floods that inundated a third of Pakistan, apart from killing over 1,700 people and causing a whopping loss of $30 billion, Sharif stressed that now it is the time to build on the momentum for international financial reforms so that no nation is left behind in the global response to climate change.