Verdens rige lande forpligtede sig med Paris-aftalen i 2015 til at finansiere “klimaforanstaltninger” i udviklingslandene med 100 milliarder dollars årligt. Målet er ikke nået, meget af støtten gives som lån, og projekterne har ofte lidt at gøre med “klimafinansiering”.

Det viser en særlig rapport, som Reuters har offentliggjort efter en grundig undersøgelse af emnet.

Midlerne, som skal bekæmpe klimaforandringerne, går til formål som kulfyrede kraftværker, lufthavne, hoteludvikling, filmproduktion og chokolade- og isfabrikker. Ganske vist foregår handlingen i den pågældende film i regnskoven:

Italy helped a retailer open chocolate and gelato stores across Asia. The United States offered a loan for a coastal hotel expansion in Haiti. Belgium backed the film “La Tierra Roja,” a love story set in the Argentine rainforest. And Japan is financing a new coal plant in Bangladesh and an airport expansion in Egypt.

De fire lande har finansieret disse fem projekter med i alt 2,6 milliarder dollars, og alle er bogført som “klimafinansiering”, rapporterer Reuters, der kommenterer, at det “ikke ligner et forsøg på at bekæmpe den globale opvarmning”.

Det viser sig, at løftet om finansiering ikke er ledsaget af officielle retningslinjer for brugen af ​​pengene, og de rige lande er imod pålagte standarder:

In doing so, they broke no rules. That’s because the pledge came with no official guidelines for what activities count as climate finance. Though some organizations have developed their own standards, the lack of a uniform system of accountability has allowed countries to make up their own. The U.N. Climate Change secretariat told Reuters it is up to the countries themselves to decide whether to impose uniform standards. Developed nations have resisted doing so.

Dette er “vilde vestens finanser”, kommenterer statssekretær i finansministeriet i Filippinerne, Mark Joven.

“Essentially, whatever they call climate finance is climate finance.”

Alle fire af de førnævnte lande forsvarer projekterne:

Japanese officials consider the power and airport projects green because they include cleaner technology or sustainable features. A U.S. official said the hotel project counts because it includes stormwater controls and hurricane protection measures. A Belgian government spokesman defended counting the grant for the rain-forest movie as climate finance because the film touches on deforestation, a driver of climate change. An Italian government official said Italy aims to consider climate in all of its financing but did not elaborate on how the chocolate stores met that goal.

Reuters har i samarbejde med blandt andet Stanford University forsøgt at finde ud af, hvordan de penge, der er beregnet til “klimaforanstaltninger”, rent faktisk bruges ved at undersøge relevante dokumenter indsendt af FN’s medlemslande. Det er ikke nogen let opgave:

The system’s lack of transparency made it impossible to tell how much money is going to efforts that truly help reduce global warming and its impact.

Countries are not required to report project details. The descriptions they disclose are often vague or non-existent – so much so that in thousands of cases, they don’t even identify the country where the money went. Even receiving countries listed in the reports sometimes couldn’t say how the money was spent.

Den største spiller inden for “klimafinansiering” er Japan, som blandt andet bruger midlerne til at stimulere den fortsatte brug af fossile energikilder:

It has lent at least $9 billion for projects that will continue reliance on fossil fuels, according to the Reuters review. At least some of those projects increase emissions rather than reduce them, including a new 1,200-megawatt coal-fired power plant that Japanese companies are building on Matarbari, an island on Bangladesh’s southeast coast. Japan has lent Bangladesh at least $2.4 billion in climate finance for the plant, expected to come online in 2024.

Japan mener, at det er et klimaprojekt, fordi kraftværket ville have haft større emissioner uden landets hjælp.

Ifølge Reuters’ undersøgelse vil Japans finansiering af en lufthavn i Egypten øge emissionerne.

Take Japan’s lending for a new terminal and related facilities at the Borg El Arab airport in Egypt. The project’s short-term goal of 1.5 million additional passengers would increase outbound flight emissions by about 50% over 2013 levels, according to an analysis conducted for Reuters by the International Council on Clean Transportation, a non-profit research organization.

Men folk skal flyve, kommenterer en egyptisk klimaduks:

The project is important to the Egyptian economy, said Mohamed Nasr, director of climate, environment and sustainable development in Egypt’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. “People have to fly,” he said.

I Japan kaldes lufthavnen, hvor der skal installeres solpaneler, for en “Eco Airport”, oplyser Reuters.

“Klimafinansiering” forventes at blive et vigtigt emne under det næste klimatopmøde (COP28) i Dubai i november og december.