September 21, (THEWILL) – The US President Joe Bidemn on Tuesday announced that the country will double its annual climate change aid budget and donate $11.4 billion per year by 2024 to developing countries.
Speaking at the UN General Assembly, Biden said the new commitment will make the US “the leader of public climate finance.”
The funding will go toward protecting developing countries that are most at risk from extreme weather events and rising temperatures caused by the effects of climate change.
The world’s richest countries signed a deal to collectively raise $100 billion a year in climate financing at the 2010 UN climate change summit in Mexico.
However, a decade later, this target remains elusive.
Boris Johnson yesterday urged developed countries to commit larger sums of climate aid, warning that “the world will see, and your people will remember, and history will judge” those who do not act.
Biden said he was confident the $100 billion a year target would be met, but added that the globe is “fast approaching the point of no return.
“This year has brought widespread death and devastation from the borderless climate crisis.
“Will we meet the threat of the more challenging climate already ravaging every part of our world with extreme weather, or we will we suffer the merciless march of ever worsening droughts and floods, more intense fires and hurricanes, longer heatwaves and rising seas?”
UN Secretary General António Guterres said: “We must get serious, and we must act fast. We are on the edge of an abyss and moving in the wrong direction.”
