Collectively, the world missed that deadline last year. The United States has been particularly criticized for transferring nothing during the four years of the Trump administration.
In her annual State of the Union address to the European Parliament, von der Leyen pointed to the European Union as the world’s biggest contributor to climate finance, calling on the US and others to “step up.”
“But we expect the United States and our partners to step up too,” she added. “This is vital because closing the climate finance gap together, the US and the European Union would be such a strong signal for global climate leadership, and it is time to deliver now. We have no time to wait anymore.”
The Biden administration has said it will double the level of climate finance transferred in the Obama administration’s second term, which averaged at around $2.8 billion, but critics say it needs to do more to make up for four years of no finance during the Trump years.
Developing nations more than a decade ago had hammered out the climate finance agreement with wealthier countries to acknowledge the developed world’s larger role, historically, in the emission of greenhouse gases. Per capita, many developed nations emit far more carbon than developing countries.