Wealthy countries sent climate funding to the developing world in recent years with interest rates or strings attached that benefited the lending nations, a Reuters data analysis found.
Japan, France, Germany, the United States and other wealthy nations are reaping billions of dollars in economic rewards from a global program meant to help the developing world grapple with the effects of climate change, a Reuters review of U.N. and Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development data shows.
The financial gains happen as part of developed nations’ pledge to send $100 billion a year to poorer countries to help them reduce emissions and cope with extreme weather. By channeling money from the program back into their own economies, wealthy countries contradict the widely embraced concept that they should compensate poorer ones for their long-term pollution that fueled climate change, more than a dozen climate finance analysts, activists, and former climate officials and negotiators told Reuters.
Wealthy nations have loaned at least $18 billion at market-rate interest, including $10.2 billion in loans made by Japan, $3.6 billion by France, $1.9 billion by Germany and $1.5 billion by the United States, according to the review by Reuters and Big Local News, a journalism program at Stanford University. That is not the norm for loans for climate-related and other aid projects, which usually carry low or no interest.
At least another $11 billion in loans – nearly all from Japan – required recipient nations to hire or purchase materials from companies in the lending countries.
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