an initiative by SEEK Development
Commentary
0 min read
Written by
Lauren Ashmore
Published on
January 30, 2024
The SEEK Climate Team has been tracking climate commitments made by 14 major donors and has been building out the first-of-its-kind tracker to provide advocates with live updates on donor climate-related pledges.
The tracker now features coverage of the tracker to now include adaptation, mitigation, and loss and damage related pledges, in addition to broader coverage of fourteen donors.
Be the first to know. Get the latest in development news, right in your inbox.
The Donor Tracker team and network of in-country experts help advocates drive sustainable impact with regular Policy Updates, data-driven analyses, and the most important news in the world of development.
By clicking Sign Up you're confirming that you agree with our Terms and Conditions .
an initiative by SEEK Development
The commitment tracker can be used as a tool for advocates to live-track commitments and stay well-informed on donor pledges, to leverage timely data in donor meetings with relevant stakeholders, and to ensure accountability for countries on both new and existing pledges. In addition, advocates can quickly identify and follow medium- and longer-term trends, such as new funding for loss & damage, energy transition, adaptation vs. mitigation, and tendencies for loans vs. grants, as well as understand how adaptation-related climate commitments are developing in specific donor markets.
Clicking the title of each column will sort the tracker by column value. A "-" indicates there is no available data on the column.
There is a continued lack of trust amongst actors. For example, at COP28, HICs confirmed that the US$100 billion goal was likely fulfilled in 2023, but that the world will need to wait until OECD data in 2025 at the earliest to fully confirm this assumption. This announcement faced backlash from parties and civil society actors, especially those most impacted by climate change, who insisted that those countries most responsible for climate change are still not doing enough to maintain temperature rises to 1.5 degrees.
The New Collective Quantified Goal, which will be decided upon in 2024, is expected to increase the international climate finance goal from this baseline of US$100 billion currently in place. However, considering the difficulty HICs have experienced in reaching the current target, it remains to be seen what the New Collective Quantified Goal, will look like.
While there was some progress at COP28, climate finance is not anywhere near the level it needs to be. For example, parties in Dubai finally agreed on the creation of a Loss & Damage Fund after thirty long years of campaigning by countries most vulnerable to climate change and its impacts. However, the dedicated fund has only received approximately US$700 million as of January 2024, far below the estimated US$290 billion to US$580 billion needed annually up to 2030, rising to between US$1.1 trillion and US$1.7 trillion by 2050.
Therefore, climate finance levels are nowhere near where they need to be. With constrained ODA budgets across HICs, with many citizens around the world head to the polls in 2024, there will be continued uncertainty around the delivery of international climate finance pledges. For example, while the UK government confirmed that it will follow through on its GBP11.6 billion (US$14 billion) commitment , it has also decided to change its methodology for how ICF is counted to make it easier to meet the pledge within its current reduced 0.5% ODA/GNI ratio.
The commitment tracker follows major climate-related events, such as the COP and UN Regional Climate Weeks, and records the commitments made during these events. The tracker also gathers information from SEEK’s own Donor Tracker, which collates relevant policy updates for priority donor markets. Commitments are also tracked through the analysis of strategy and policy documents, detailing donor prioritization of climate adaptation and adaptation-related commitments.
While the commitment tracker provides a very comprehensive list of major commitments tracked by the SEEK Climate team, the list is by no means exhaustive, for several reasons:
With these challenges in mind, there are several caveats when engaging with the commitment tracker:
SEEK provides sources for all listed commitments and continues to review the data to assess its accuracy. Feel free to reach out to the Climate team with any corrections or additional information.
Interested in commissioning analysis in financing or development tailored for your organization’s specific needs?
The Donor Tracker team and network of in-country experts help advocates drive sustainable impact with regular Policy Updates, data-driven analyses, and the most important news in the world of development.
Lauren Ashmore
Be the first to know. Get the latest in development news, right in your inbox.
The Donor Tracker team and network of in-country experts help advocates drive sustainable impact with regular Policy Updates, data-driven analyses, and the most important news in the world of development.
By clicking Sign Up you're confirming that you agree with our Terms and Conditions .
an initiative by SEEK Development
SEEK Development
The Donor Tracker is an initiative by SEEK DevelopmentContact
SEEK DevelopmentCotheniusstrasse 310407 BerlinGermany