After more than a decade of disappointment, the world’s wealthiest countries may have finally fulfilled their 2009 promise to mobilise $100 billion a year to help developing countries face the climate crisis. But the harsh truth is that developing nations are going to have to pay most of that money back – with interest.
When the world’s wealthiest economies pledged in 2009 to mobilise $100 billion a year towards climate action for developing countries by 2020, few present at the COP15 questioned the urgency of the task before them. Certainly not then-UK prime minister Gordon Brown, the first person to propose the figure in a speech delivered in the months leading up to that year’s climate summit in Copenhagen.
