Climate change

A new climate finance goal that delivers for the Pacific

August 27, 2024

This report brings together the voices, experiences and demands of civil society from across the Pacific region, including Australia and New Zealand. It has been endorsed by the Pacific Islands Climate Action Network and 55 organisations and networks across seven countries, including Australia and New Zealand. The report presents a comprehensive vision for a new climate finance goal that delivers for the most vulnerable communities, and that sets the world on track to scale up climate action, phase out fossil fuels and transition to a cleaner, greener and more just future for all.

Read report here.

Doing Our Fairshare: New Zealand’s Responsibility to Provide Climate Finance Report

August 27, 2024

Two new reports reveal how New Zealand can meet its climate finance obligations ahead of COP29.

Auckland, New Zealand –Humanitarian agencies World Vision New Zealand and Oxfam Aotearoa, alongside the New Zealand Climate Action Network (NZCAN), have released two important climate finance reports today.

These reports are published during the Pacific Islands Forum in Tonga and ahead of the United Nations climate change conference (COP29) in Baku, Azerbaijan, where the New Zealand government will be participating in negotiations on climate finance to fund climate change adaptation and mitigation measures

Doing Our Fair Share: New Zealand’s Responsibility to Provide Climate Finance, is published today by World Vision New Zealand and Oxfam Aotearoa.

“Our report highlights New Zealand’s responsibility to bolster its climate finance support for communities on the frontlines of climate change in the Pacific” says co-author, World Vision’s Advocacy Policy and Research Advisor, Dr Olivia Yates.

“As climate change intensifies, those communities least responsible are paying the highest price. Children and their families who are facing the most severe impacts often live in poverty, unable to afford the necessary tools to switch to greener, more climate-resilient livelihoods and prepare for future unprecedented extreme weather,” she says.

Co-Author, Oxfam Aotearoa’s Climate Justice Lead Dr Nick Henry says “New Zealand’s climate finance is helping to build resilience for Pacific communities on the frontlines of climate change. The need for support will only increase in the coming years and New Zealand should continue to stand with the Pacific and be ready to contribute our fair share.”

The report reveals that to meet its fair share of climate finance, New Zealand should be contributing between 0.38% and 0.66% of the global climate goal, which currently equates to between NZ$558 million and NZ$953 million each year, based on our gross national income (GNI) and historic greenhouse gas emissions. Currently, New Zealand is only fulfilling 34% to 58% of this target.

The report shows that, although New Zealand’s climate finance falls short by over NZ$200 million, its funding has been steadily increasing. In the next funding round (2026-2030), New Zealand has a fresh opportunity to show global leadership by committing to provide a fair share of climate finance.

Dr Olivia Yates hopes the report will encourage the government to take seriously the need for ambitious climate finance in its upcoming climate finance decisions.

“While all countries must act on climate change, higher-income countries like New Zealand should pay their ‘fair share’ of the bill for climate action, based on their higher historical emissions and financial capability.”

Climate finance involves funding to support lower-income countries to cover the costs of shifting to greener systems, adapting to our warming world, and dealing with losses and damages from extreme weather – all vital for a response to climate change that leaves no one behind.

‘Seizing the Moment: A New Climate Finance Goal That Delivers for the Pacific’, by Climate Action Networks (CAN) in Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific Islands, calls on the New Zealand Government to stand with the Pacific and commit to new funding aligned with a stronger global goal on climate finance, known as the New Collective Quantified Goal on Climate Finance (NCQG), to be set at COP29 this November.

The NCQG is set to replace the prior US$100 billion (NZ$146 billion) annual global goal, a promise made by higher-income nations in 2010 to provide at least US$100 billion annually for climate change adaptation and mitigation each year.

Dr Nick Henry, Climate Justice Lead at Oxfam Aotearoa and co-author on the CAN report, says that funding to-date has been far from fair.

“The previous $100 billion goal was largely met in 2022 through loans and redirected development assistance, exacerbating debt burdens in lower-income countries. Countries on the frontlines of climate change now spend more paying debts than they receive in aid.”

The CAN report calls for a global target of at least US$1 trillion per year (NZ$1.46 trillion), prioritising grants over loans, to adequately support those hit hardest by climate change.

“At COP29, New Zealand has an opportunity to stand with the Pacific and advocate for a stronger, fairer climate finance target,” he says.

“New Zealand should commit to its fair share of the refreshed global goal, retaining its emphasis on grants instead of loans, and in addition to current aid efforts, to show enduring support, leadership, and a commitment to equity.”

As COP29 approaches, New Zealand has the opportunity—and the responsibility—to increase its fair share of climate finance and stand with the Pacific to ensure a fairer and more sustainable future for people most affected by climate change. Countries on the frontlines are urging global action, and New Zealand must rise to the challenge.

Note to Editors:

New Zealand’s fair share of climate finance has been calculated by looking at the country’s share of responsibility for climate change (based on the country’s cumulative emissions of greenhouse gases since 1992 and since 1850) and its ability to pay (according to its Gross National Income) relative to other higher-income (“Annex II”) countries.

Media Contact:

For a copy of the report, or to arrange interviews, please contact: Rachel Schaevitz – [email protected] or 027 959 5555 Ashley Miln – [email protected] or 020-4051-3769 Kirsty Jones – [email protected] or (09) 580 7753

Towards Transparent, Accountable and Inclusive Climate Change Policies in Timor-Leste

August 12, 2024

Oxfam in Timor-Leste has released a report analyzing the climate change policies in Timor-Leste with a focus on transparency, accountability, and inclusivity. The report highlights the disproportionate impact of climate change on vulnerable groups, particularly women and people with disabilities, and underscores the importance of effective climate finance disbursement to help these communities build resilience.

“Vulnerable groups in Timor-Leste, particularly women and people with disabilities, are already experiencing severe impacts caused by climate breakdown. We need a climate action plan that enables the most vulnerable to participate,” said Jude Perera, Country Director for Oxfam in Timor-Leste.

The report emphasizes that climate finance is critical to help these communities build resilience. It outlines how the Government of Timor-Leste (GoTL) influences climate finance allocation through its policies. The policies analyzed include the Strategic Development Plan, National Adaptation Plan, Nationally Determined Contribution, National Climate Change Policy, Zero Draft Carbon Farming Policy and Guidelines, and the proposed Climate Change Framework Law.

A key recommendation from the scoping study is the need for greater transparency. The report recommends that all climate change policies should be available in Tetum on a Climate Change Information webpage and that the GoTL should expand its direct engagement with communities on climate change.

Accountability is another crucial aspect highlighted in the report. While the policy framework includes provisions promoting accountability, their implementation is largely lacking. The report recommends that the GoTL implement these accountability measures and develop a national monitoring, evaluation, reporting, and learning framework.

“The government has made significant progress in creating a policy framework that enables affected communities to hold it to account for its climate action. We want to work with the government to implement its good intentions,” Perera stated.

“Oxfam calls on the government to develop a framework to monitor the implementation of its climate change policies,” Perera emphasized.

Although gender equity is an important element of the GoTL’s climate change policy approach, the report calls for the GoTL to implement all provisions promoting gender equity.

“Oxfam congratulates the Government of Timor-Leste for including gender equity as a core focus of its climate change response. What we need to see now is action. The government should urgently develop guidelines for mainstreaming gender into Timor-Leste’s climate change response as provided for in its National Adaptation Plan,” said Lucio Savio, Climate Justice Programme Manager.

In addition, the report points out that the current policy framework does not specifically address the challenges faced by people with disabilities in relation to climate breakdown.

“People with disabilities have been left behind from Timor-Leste’s response to climate change. We call upon the government to update all climate policies to include the rights, needs, and priorities of people with disabilities,” Savio added.

The report underscores the need for a climate finance plan and mobilization strategy. Implementing the climate change policy framework depends on dedicated financial resources. The report calls on the GoTL to develop a financing plan that outlines how Timor-Leste’s climate policies will be funded and a strategy to access international support required to undertake climate action.

“Climate finance is the key to helping vulnerable communities build resilience to climate breakdown, yet it’s missing from the government’s climate change response. Oxfam is calling on the government to develop a plan to finance its climate policies and a strategy to access international support,” Savio emphasized.

To access the report, visit here.

The Climate Finance Project is supported by the New Zealand Aid Program. Its contents are the sole responsibility of Oxfam in Timor-Leste, and the views expressed in this publication do not necessarily reflect those of the New Zealand Government.

About Oxfam in Timor-Leste:

Oxfam in Timor-Leste (OiTL) is part of a global movement that fights against inequality, poverty, and injustice. Oxfam works in more than 60 countries in partnership with over 3,500 organizations to deliver 22 million programmes. Over 50 percent of those working with us are women and girls.

Oxfam has been working with the Timorese people for almost 50 years. We are an organization focused on rights and a leader in our partnership model, to enable our partners to conduct activities in rural communities. One of our objectives is to advance our work to influence development challenges such as land rights and economic diversification.

“Least Cost” means “More Damage” in Government’s Emissions Plan

July 17, 2024

Oxfam Aotearoa is dismayed by the lack of ambition in the Government’s Emissions Reduction Plan released today.

‘Relying on the least cost option of planting more pine trees, rather than cutting climate pollution, will only cause more damage for communities in Aotearoa and the Pacific on the frontlines of the climate crisis.’ said Oxfam Aotearoa’s Climate Justice Lead, Nick Henry.

‘The gap is growing between our domestic policies and our international commitments. This will cost New Zealand billions of dollars by 2030 if we rely on buying offsets from other countries. The lack of ambition in today’s plan will increase that cost by tens of millions.

‘Today’s announcement makes it clear that the Government now has no plan to reach net-zero, with emissions exceeding net-zero budgets after 2030. The cost of cutting climate pollution is being kicked down the road, while communities in Aotearoa and the Pacific continue to suffer from the worsening climate crisis.

‘We are disappointed to see the lack of significant support for public and active transport in the plan. Improving access to public transport would be one of the best climate wins, and would also help reduce the cost of living for so many.

‘The plan does nothing to fix the Emissions Trading Scheme. We need leadership from Government to stop subsidising pollution through free allocation and change settings that reward planting pine trees rather than cutting gross emissions.

‘It is not credible to claim that increasing oil and gas exploration is compatible with reducing emissions. It is the wrong century for “lesser evil” thinking that fossil gas is better than coal, when renewable energy options are already here and getting cheaper every year. Aotearoa urgently needs to stop producing and burning fossil fuels. Instead, we need a just transition to renewable energy for workers, communities, and the planet.’

Notes for editors:

1. The Emissions Reduction Plan states: ‘The gap between the first and second emissions budgets and the NDC is 101 Mt CO2-e.’ [p. 34].

2. Mt CO2-e is Megatonnes of Carbon-Dioxide equivalent emissions, including emissions of all Greenhouse Gases. New Zealand has committed to cutting net emissions to no more than 571 Mt CO2-e for 2021-2030 in our Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) under the Paris Agreement.

3. In 2023, Treasury calculated the gap between ERP1 and ERP2 and the NDC as 99.2 Mt CO2-e and estimated that purchasing international offsets to cover this gap would cost between $3.7 billion and $20.6 billion, with a mid-point estimate of $8.6 billion, assuming all emissions budgets were met. [p. 86]

Even assuming Treasury’s lowest cost estimate, increasing the gap between emissions and the NDC commitment by two percent, as today’s plan does, would cost New Zealand at least $80 million.

4. For more on the urgent need for a just transition from fossil fuels, see Oxfam Aotearoa’s 2023 report Closing Time: Why Aotearoa needs a just transition from fossil fuel production now.

For more information:

Rachel Schaevitz/ [email protected]

New Oxfam report shows broken promises on climate finance

June 6, 2023

A new report out this week titled ‘Climate Finance Shadow Report’ from Oxfam shows New Zealand still has much more to do to support poorer countries adapt and respond to the climate crisis.

Oxfam Aotearoa’s Climate Justice Lead Nick Henry said:

“Oxfam’s report reveals that as governments around the world begin negotiations of a new global goal for climate finance, rich countries have already broken their promise to deliver US$100 billion a year to assist developing countries.

“The New Zealand Government is doing better than most on climate finance, but unfortunately the bar is very low. It is time for New Zealand to commit to increasing its climate finance and call on other rich countries to do the same. And deliver on their promises.

“The new report reveals that globally only a quarter of climate finance is given as grants, meaning most climate finance is provided in the form of loans. Although the New Zealand Government has a long way to go in order to do its fair share, one positive take away is that New Zealand has a strong commitment to give climate finance as grants, not loans. Loans only increases the burden on poorer countries as they take on expensive debt. Debt created from the failure of rich countries to deliver on their promises.

“It is also encouraging to see New Zealand increasingly integrate gender-equitable approaches to climate finance, but the Government is a long way off from making sure that the needs of people in all their diversity are met. New Zealand must stand with our whānau in the Pacific – the women, girls, and LGBTIQA+ and others who are on the frontlines of the climate crisis.

“Rich countries must find new ways to fund climate finance by taxing the wealthiest and the big polluters. In addition, Oxfam Aotearoa calls for new and additional finance to respond to loss and damage caused by climate change. This is a separate negotiation leading up to COP28, and should come with new funding.”

Notes:

Click here for the report: https://www.oxfam.org.nz/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Climate-Finance-shadow-report.pdf

New Zealand’s current climate finance commitments end in 2025. Commitments for the next period from 2026 will need to contribute New Zealand’s fair share of the new global quantified goal on climate finance to be set at COP28 in December. Discussions on the process for setting the new global goal are underway this week in Bonn, at the intersessional meeting of parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.

Rich countries’ continued failure to honour their US$100 billon climate finance promise threatens negotiations and undermines climate action

June 6, 2023

Rich countries’ continued failure to honor their $100 billon climate finance promise threatens negotiations and undermines climate action

As global greenhouse emissions continue to rise, and climate change wreaks more havoc upon the people and places least responsible for the problem, rich polluting countries are now three years overdue on their promise to mobilize $100 billion a year in climate finance for low- and middle-income countries.

To make matters worse, says Oxfam, the actual support they provide is much less than reported numbers suggest, and is coming mostly as debt that has to be repaid.

Oxfam’s ‘Climate Finance Shadow Report 2023’ published today shows that while donors claim to have mobilized $83.3 billion in 2020, the real value of their spending was —at most— $24.5 billion. The $83.3 billion claim is an overestimate because it includes projects where the climate objective has been overstated or as loans cited at their face value.

By providing loans rather than grants, these funds are even potentially harming rather than helping local communities, as they add to the debt burdens of already heavily indebted countries —even more so in this time of rising interest rates.

Donor countries are repurposing up to one-third of official aid contributions as climate finance rather than putting forward new and additional money, while more than half of all climate finance going to the world’s poorest countries is now coming as loans.

Among bilateral providers, France has the highest share of its bilateral public climate finance through loans, at a staggering 92 percent. Other loan-heavy culprits include Austria (71 percent), Japan (90 percent), and Spain (88 percent). In 2019–20, 90 percent of all climate finance provided by multilateral development banks, like the World Bank came as loans.

“This is deeply unjust. Rich countries are treating poorer countries with contempt. In doing so, they are fatally undermining crucial climate negotiations. They’re playing a dangerous game where we will all lose out,” said Oxfam International’s Climate Change Policy Lead, Nafkote Dabi.

In the lead up to the Bonn Climate Summit (5 to 15 June), Oxfam also finds that climate-related development financing is largely gender-blind. Only 2.9 percent of all funding identified gender equality as worth prioritizing. Only one-third of climate finance projects in 2019-2020 mainstreamed gender, meaning that they took into account both women and men’s specific needs, experiences and concerns.

Oxfam estimates that the real value of funds allocated by rich countries in 2020, to support climate action in low- and middle-income countries was between $21 billion and $24.5 billion, of which only $9.5 billion to $11.5 billion was directed specifically for climate adaptation —crucial funding for projects and processes to help climate-vulnerable countries address the worsening harms of climate change.

“Don’t be fooled into thinking $11.5 billion is anywhere near enough for low- and middle-income countries to help their people cope with more and bigger floods, hurricanes, firestorms, droughts and other terrible harms brought about by climate change,” Dabi said. “People in the US spend four times more than that each year feeding their cats and dogs.”

Oxfam is highly concerned that adaptation funding is given too little attention when, in the past three years, India, Pakistan and Central and South America have all seen record heatwaves, in Pakistan later followed by flooding that affected over 33 million people, while East Africa is mired in its worst drought in over 40 years, contributing to crisis levels of hunger.

“Despite their extreme vulnerability to climate impacts, the world’s poorest countries, particularly the least developed countries and small island developing states, are simply not receiving enough support. Instead, they are being driven deeper into debt,” Dabi said.

The expectation that private investors can be mobilized by low- and middle-income countries to contribute a sizeable chunk of climate financing has not materialized, raising only $14 billion yearly, mainly for mitigation. Oxfam says it is difficult to find details on how this private finance is used or who benefits from it. According to a recent Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) report, mobilized private adaptation financing rose sharply from $1.9 billion in 2018 to $4.4 billion in 2020, mainly because of a big liquefied natural gas energy project in Mozambique that does not reveal any adaptation activities.

Oxfam is highly concerned that funding for “loss and damage” —climate impacts that cannot or have not been mitigated or adapted to— still has no predictable place within the international climate finance architecture. Loss and damage finance needs are urgent, with estimates saying that low- and middle-income countries could face costs of up to $580 billion annually by 2030.

Oxfam says that ongoing deliberations under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to set a new global goal on mobilizing climate finance from 2025 onwards is a chance to rebuild trust between rich and low- and middle-income countries. But if past mistakes are not resolved and simply repeated, this initiative will have failed before it properly starts.

Climate finance providers should be massively scaling-up their efforts and be reporting climate financing on a case-by-case basis, highlighting the actual proportions channeled towards mitigation and adaptation. There is equally an urgent need for more grant-based financing for climate action, and less momentum toward loaning the money they have all promised to give.

Notes to editors

Download Oxfam’s ‘Climate Finance Shadow Report 2023’.

In East Africa alone, drought and conflict have left a record 36 million people facing extreme hunger, nearly equivalent to the population of Canada. Oxfam estimates that up to two people are likely dying from hunger every minute in Ethiopia, Kenya Somalia, and South Sudan.

The UN currently designates 46 countries as LDCs.

According to the OECD, mobilized private adaptation financing rose sharply from $1.9 billion in 2018 to $4.4 billion in 2020, mainly because of a big liquefied natural gas energy project in Mozambique that does not reveal any adaptation activities.

According to Anil Markandya and Mikel González-Eguino (2018), the costs of loss and damage in low- and middle-income countries could reach between $290 billion to $580 billion a year by 2030.

According to the American Pet Products Association, Americans spent $58.1 billion on pet food and treats in 2022.