Speaking at a conference of African environment ministers on Thursday in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, Stiell said investments in renewable energy and climate resilience “can and should be the single greatest opportunity for Africa, to lift up people, communities, and economies”.

African countries face a disproportionately heavy burden from climate change, with temperatures across the continent rising slightly faster than the global average, according to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). Deadly floods, droughts and extreme heatwaves are becoming more frequent and severe, with increasing knock-on effects on economies and societies.

African countries are losing between 2 and 5 percent of their gross domestic product (GDP) every year as a result of climate-related hazards, according to a new WMO report cited by Stiell in his speech.

The UNFCCC chief cautioned world leaders – especially those from the G20 group of the largest economies – against dismissing climate impacts across Africa as someone else’s problem. “It is African nations and people who pay the heaviest price,” he said. But, he added, “the economic and political reality – in an interdependent world – is we are all in this crisis together”.

Green investment pleas

Stiell went on to call for “exponential changes in business, investments, and growth” that would strengthen Africa’s role in climate solutions, including renewables such as solar and wind power, energy efficiency, clean cooking and adaptation measures.

African countries need an estimated $277 billion a year to bankroll plans outlined in their nationally determined contributions (NDCs) – governments’ climate action blueprints –  but they can currently count on a fraction of that sum.

Belém’s electric bus controversy: a cautionary tale for COP30

Investments in clean energy and related electricity grid upgrades amounted to $39 billion across the African continent in 2023, just 2% of the global total, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). Fossil fuel supply and power generation still attract the bulk of energy investments in Africa.

Efforts to prepare for, and adjust to, the escalating impacts of climate change are similarly underfunded.

Climate adaptation in sub-Saharan Africa is forecast to cost between $30 billion and $50 billion a year over the next decade, according to the WMO report. But the region only received an estimated $10.8 billion in adaptation finance between 2021 and 2022,  according to the latest data published by the non-profit Climate Policy Initiative, which tracks adaptation finance flows.

Youssef Nassef, the UNFCCC’s director for adaptation, told journalists on Wednesday that climate change is exacerbating poverty, undermining food security and harming children’s development on the African continent.

Yet only 21 out of 54 African countries have so far submitted National Adaptation Plans, which are a key tool for mapping out and funding climate resilience measures – mainly due to the limited ability of the poorest nations to prepare them, he said. That, he added, is “a cause for concern”.

Climate finance focus at COP29

At the COP29 UN climate summit in Baku, Azerbaijan, this November, countries are set to agree on a new collective quantified goal (NCQG) for finance that should channel more money into both adaptation and clean energy in developing nations. But governments remain deeply divided over many of the fundamental issues, including the size of the goal, what it should fund and, crucially, who should contribute.

Rich countries want high-emitting emerging economies, like China and the Gulf states, to pitch in. While hitting back at attempts to include them in the NCQG donor base, some of those countries are already providing climate finance bilaterally, outside the UN process.

China’s President Xi Jinping and African leaders stand for a group photo during the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) on September 5, 2024. ADEK BERRY/Pool via REUTERS

Beijing pledged on Thursday to step up its financial support to Africa with a fresh $51-billion funding offer to develop infrastructure, agriculture and trade across the continent. That should include 30 clean energy and green development projects, according to China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which did not provide further details.

Stiell said on Thursday that COP29 “must signal that the climate crisis is core business for every government, with finance solutions to match”.

He called for progress on a range of finance sources besides the NCQG, from getting a global carbon market up and running to making the new loss and damage fund operational – all of which would help drive climate progress in Africa and beyond.

“An Africa ascending, an Africa empowered to take bolder climate actions is in every nation’s interests,” the UN climate boss emphasised.

(Reporting by Matteo Civillini; editing by Megan Rowling)

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The UNFCCC executive director Simon Stiell made an urgent plea for more funding to over 40 ministers and negotiators gathered on Thursday in Helsingør, Denmark, for the first major climate summit of the year. 

“Our organization, the UNFCCC, now faces severe financial challenges,” he said. “We are attempting to meet an ever-growing mandate. Our job is to make your job easier. To carry out the tasks you have all agreed we should do, but we can only do this if we have the funding support.”

Stiell highlighted that the organisation’s budget “is currently less than half funded”. 

Budget headache

The UNFCCC estimated it needed around €152m ($165m) in the 2024-2025 period to carry out an ever-growing number of  activities that countries ask the climate body to be in charge of.

But, in Bonn last June, countries agreed only to a core budget of €74m ($80.4m) with compulsory contributions provided by governments based on their wealth. This was a 19% increase on the previous two years’ budget, ignoring inflation.

That left the climate body with a hole of €78m ($85m) that would need to be filled with voluntary donations from governments and private entities.

This money is needed to arrange dozens of meetings across the world on key negotiating strands like the new climate finance goal – to be agreed at COP29 – the global goal on adaptation and a new carbon market under Article 6 of the Paris Agreement.

Voluntary donations missing

But, so far this year, the UNFCCC has managed to raise less than $9m in voluntary donations. The United Kingdom has given the largest sum – $2.1m – followed by the Open Society Foundations ($1.5m), the Rockefeller Foundation ($1.3m) and Germany ($0.9m).

The climate body is also scrambling to collect millions of dollars in compulsory contributions that countries failed to fork out in previous years.

African dismay at decision to host loss and damage advice hub in Geneva

The funding shortfall is fuelling a sense of angst among UNFCCC staff, who are forced to constantly find new ways to shuffle money around in emergency mode without any long-term certainty, according to a source with knowledge of the UNFCCC’s operations.

The UNFCCC has repeatedly warned governments of the risk of leaving them at the mercy of voluntary donations.

During discussions over the size of its budget last year, it wrote that “prohibitive dependence on supplementary funding” would result in “jeopardizing the sustainability of the UNFCCC secretariat and limiting support to critical recurring and long-term activities”.

Urgent pleas

At Cop28, soon after the gavel came down in Dubai, Simon Stiell urged governments to stump up more cash for unfunded operations.

But his plea went unheeded, prompting Stiell to issue a new request for funding in a letter to all countries last week. He then used his speech at the Danish climate summit to bring his argument out in the open.

“This is me once again ringing that alarm bell,” he said. “I urge you to respond as soon as possible, to ensure you get the support you need and have requested from us.”

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Grenada’s former climate and environment minister, who took the reins of the UN climate body at the end of August, made the comments at an event at the UN general assembly on Monday. This was his first public intervention in the role.

The world is at “an inflection point,” Stiell told the plenary hall in New York. “The science is clear, if we continue to do what we’re doing, we’re going to fall off a cliff edge.”

While many world leaders were attending the state funeral of Queen Elizabeth II across the Atlantic, those who arrived to the UN early were discussing sustainable development.

To meet the Paris Agreement goals, global emissions need to be halved by 2030, said Stiell. “Think about it… That is equivalent to two World Cup finals, two Olympic finals to go”.

Upcoming Cop27 talks in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, in November need to deliver “progress and direction,” he said.

UN climate negotiations are shifting from target and rule-setting to implementation, across four negotiation tracks: cutting emissions, coping with impacts, finance and addressing losses and damages from impacts which can’t be adapted to.

Cop27, Stiell said, has to “recognise the urgency of what has to be done and the scale of the response that is required.”

UN general assembly: Five burning climate issues

Stiell is taking on the leadership of UN Climate Change at a time when geopolitical tensions are creating headwinds to action.

At the Cop26 climate summit, the former minister led consultations with Danish environment minister Dan Jørgensen on how countries can reduce their emissions faster this decade to keep 1.5C within reach.

These discussions led to countries agreeing to “revisit and strengthen” their 2030 climate plans by the end of 2022.

Australia, Egypt and the UAE have updated their climate plans. India formalised its Cop26 commitments. There has been policy progress in the US, with the passage of a landmark climate bill.

But most G20 countries have yet to answer the call.

Instead, the energy crisis triggered by Russia’s war on Ukraine has seen many nations ramp up fossil fuel production at home and seek alternative gas supplies overseas.

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