The United States will double in the next three years the public climate financing target set during the Obama administration to help poor nations reduce greenhouse gas emissions, President Joe Biden said on Thursday
WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 22nd April, 2021) The United States will double in the next three years the public climate financing target set during the Obama administration to help poor nations reduce greenhouse gas emissions, President Joe Biden said on Thursday.
"The United States will double by 2024 our annual public climate financing development aid to developing countries compared to what we provided during the second half of the Obama-Biden administration," the president told the Leaders Climate Summit he hosted on behalf of Earth Day 2021.
Biden launched what he called were "ambitious but attainable goals" to help developing countries get back on track with their commitments to the environment and to compensate for the United States lack of engagement during the Trump administration.
The US president also said that the United States would triple financing of climate adaptation, which focuses on adjustments to current or expected climate change, by 2024. The White House said earlier that the Democrat party will work with Republicans in Congress to enact the needed legislation regarding this issue.
For an idea of what the new US commitments would cost, Leonardo Martinez-Diaz, a top aide to Biden's Climate Envoy John Kerry, said on Twitter that total US international public climate finance averaged around $2.8 billion per year during the baseline period from fiscal year 2013 to 2017, with around $500 million going toward adaptation.
Biden said earlier that he aims to cut US greenhouse gas emissions by half and achieve net zero emissions by 2050. US emissions represented less than 15 percent of world levels and other countries need to step up their efforts because no nation can solve this crisis on its own, he added.
The two-day summit gathers leaders of some 40 countries to discuss actions needed to address climate change as well as to invest in clean energy and low-carbon economy. It aims to set the roadmap for the UN Climate Change Conference that Britain will host in Glasgow in November.
