President Alexander Stubb delivered Finland’s national statement at Cop-29 in Baku, Azerbaijan, on Tuesday, 12 November 2024. Stubb’s promise of additional climate financing may be a step in the right direction, but it suggests a double standard, Niko Humalisto, an advocacy specialist at the Finnish Evangelical Lutheran Mission (Felm), stated to YLE in Baku on Tuesday. (Matti Porre – Handout)
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LEADING Finnish policy-makers are touring international climate conferences pledging climate financing for developing countries all the while making dramatic cuts in the financing at home, reports YLE.
President Alexander Stubb on Tuesday announced at Cop-29 in Baku, Azerbaijan, that Finland will channel additional financing to poor countries, calling particular attention to island states that are at risk of becoming uninhabitable due to rising sea levels.
The Ministry for Foreign Affairs later specified that the country will contribute 2.5 million euros to the Systematic Observations Finance Facility (SOFF), a financing instrument designed to enable countries with the most severe weather and climate data gap to procure and institute systems for the early detection of floods and other extreme weather events.
A similar announcement was made at Cop-28 in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates, in 2023. Prime Minister Petteri Orpo (NCP) pledged at his opening remarks at the conference that the government would pay three million dollars into the newly established loss and damage fund.
Both announcements suggest a double standard, YLE wrote on Thursday.
Finnish Development NGOs (Fingo) calculated in a report published earlier this month that the current government will cut climate financing to the tune of hundreds of millions of euros by the end of the electoral term. Most of the cuts, it highlighted, appear to be targeted at key mechanisms of climate financing, including the largest climate fund in the world, the Green Climate Fund.
A critical element of the Paris Agreement, the Fund has provided financial support to countries replacing fossil with renewable energy
Source: www.helsinkitimes.fi
