Financing the response to climate change - we all need to play our part.

“Climate change is the defining issue of our time – and we are at a defining moment…this is the absolute priority.” UN Secretary General

 

Developing countries are not waiting for international finance to enable their climate response. They have already begun to prioritise billions of dollars of their own scarce domestic resources for climate action. It is difficult to articulate how much is being spent on climate through national budgets as climate change impacts so many different ministries’ spending across central and local government. But ministries of finance are rising to this challenge by establishing Climate Budget Tagging systems to monitor and track climate-related expenditures in their public budget systems. Whilst the proportion of budgets classified as ‘aligned with climate objectives’ varies, it averages in the range of five to ten percent of a country’s budget – often amounting to billions of dollars. State bureaus in charge of managing budget formulation and execution are increasingly vexed by climate change as a systemic issue impacting the effectiveness and efficiency of their spending.