Minister corralling $100B climate funds says he’s ‘cautiously optimistic’ on its delivery

Both Canada and Germany agreed to help round up the money in advance of the 2021 United Nations climate conference, also known as COP26, after funding for the program had slowed.

Canada’s environment minister says he’s “cautiously optimistic” that he, and his German counterpart, will be able to convince enough countries to help fund a $100-billion climate change pledge ahead of the rapidly approaching U.N. climate talks in Scotland next month.

Speaking with The West Block’s Mercedes Stephenson, Jonathan Wilkinson said that the fund, which is specifically earmarked to help developing countries fight climate change, was a “critical piece” in the Paris Accords’ architecture.

According to Wilkinson, both Canada and Germany agreed to help corral the money in advance of the 2021 United Nations climate conference, also known as COP26, after funding for the program had slowed.

“We have been spending a lot of time over the last couple of months doing that, and certainly the last couple of days were meeting with a lot of countries to twist their arms about being more ambitious with respect to climate finance,” said Wilkinson, who at the time had spent several days in Milan for the conference’s final set-up in agenda.

“I would say that I am cautiously optimistic that we are going to be able to deliver on that when we get to COP. But of course, there’s still a bit more work for us to do over the coming days.”

On Friday, Wilkinson said that both Canada and Germany were making “a lot of progress” in their efforts and that he had spent the last two days in Milan in a series of bilateral meetings with some of the world’s most powerful and richest countries.

More than 10 years ago, those same nations had collectively agreed to raise $100-billion in climate financing a year by 2020 in order to help fund the developing worlds’ efforts to adapt and mitigate against climate change.

Last month, the OECD revealed that those developed countries were US$20 billion short of that $100-billion goal — and with those wealthy nations producing a majority of the emissions responsible for destabilizing the planet’s climate and warming it at an increasingly rapid rate — Wilkinson and Germany’s environment state secretary Jochen Flasbarth both agreed to help get them to cough up the cash.