Ottawa Environment Minister Jonathan Wilkinson has said Canada and Germany are taking big steps to persuade wealthy countries around the world to raise more money to help developing countries fight climate change.

Canada’s environment minister is in Italy this week for final talks to set the agenda for the 2021 UN climate change conference to be held in Scotland next month, known as COP26.

These discussions include a deadline for countries to sign the Paris Agreement on climate change to come up with more desirable greenhouse gas reduction plans and to take time to irreversibly slow climate change.

But it is important to have the resources to actually implement these projects.

More than 10 years ago, rich countries agreed to raise US$100 billion annually in climate aid by 2020 so that developing countries can adapt and mitigate climate change.

The world’s most developed countries are now responsible for most evictions.

Last month, the OECD reported that $20 billion is short of the $100 billion target for developed countries. In July, Wilkinson and German Environment Minister J. Ossen Flasbart agreed to fill the gap before the COP26 negotiations could begin.

Wilkinson said Friday that Flashbart initially described the mission as “impossible.” But after spending most of the past two days in Milan, Wilkinson said the movement has been fueled by nearly a dozen bilateral meetings with some of the world’s richest nations.

“I would say that we have made great progress and Germany and Canada are working hard to make this possible and we will commit to $100 billion,” he told a news conference in Milan this afternoon.

Although no new monetary pledges have been announced yet, he later confirmed that he has received assurances from several countries that new pledges will come.

Some gaps were already closed before the last push.

At the leaders’ G7 summit in June, Canada pledged to increase its funding to nearly $1 billion a year for the next five years, and Germany to increase its annual contribution by a third to more than $7 billion by 2025. promised.

Last month, US President Joe Biden said that US contributions would reach $11.4 billion by 2024. Under former President Donald Trump, the United States canceled most of its climate aid and withdrew the United States from the Paris Agreement.

Wilson said the United States’ withdrawal to Paris had made “a huge difference” and that US economic engagement was “critical to achieving the $100 billion goal”.

Eddie Perez, International Climate Diplomacy Manager for Climate Change Network Canada, said the action agreed by Canada and Germany was a big hot potato that would eventually negotiate or collapse to move the world faster.

Wilkinson and Flasbart intend to publish a report on what was promised by the third week of October and how the rest might be accomplished.

“We’re not sure yet whether they can come up with a credible plan,” Perez told the Canadian press.

The environment and climate ministers of Costa Rica and Grenada said in a commentary released in July that meeting the promised climate finance goals is the only way for countries like yours to have a “reasonable chance” of a sustainable future.

Money is only part of the puzzle. The type of financing is also important. Last year, Oxfam said that 80 percent of climate finance from wealthy governments comes in the form of loans rather than grants.

Other studies have shown that climate protection projects such as clean energy are more likely to generate a return on investment and that less interest in funding infrastructure projects will help protect poor countries from the effects of climate change already changing. Systems that do not have a clear ROI are the most expensive.

This Canadian Press report was first published on October 1, 2021.