Wealthy nations are often hesitant to provide climate finance to developing countries such as SA due to concern about governance, accountability and the slow implementation of existing funds.
This is according to Michael Jarvis from the Trust, Accountability and Inclusion Collaborative in Washington — a network of funders who ensure resources are distributed equitably.
Jarvis, who attends World Bank and other climate stakeholder meetings on climate and finance, provided Business Day with insight into the frustrations among key players in the Global North regarding emerging economies.
While the frustrations were not confined to SA, he said, “you would have a stronger case of saying, ‘Where is that $8.5bn, we should have had it by now,’ if it looked like the country has its act together”.
SA is set to receive $8.5bn in climate financing as part of the Just Energy Transition Partnership (JETP), an amount that is being allocated in tranches. The JETP is a climate finance initiative that supports developing countries in shifting from fossil fuels to clean energy while ensuring fairness.
At COP29 in Baku last year, environment minister Dion George pointed out that SA needed “much more” to achieve a meaningful green transition. However, George could not give Business Day exact figures, explaining that “it’s more complicated than that”.
President Cyril Ramaphosa said in his state of the nation address (Sona) on Thursday evening that the international community had pledged more than $13bn. He added that “significant private capital is being invested locally”.
In July 2024, the presidential climate commission reported that SA’s adaptation costs through 2030 could range from R4.2bn to R308bn, depending on mitigation scenarios.
After painstaking negotiations at COP29, developed countries agreed on a target of $300bn to assist developing countries with their climate action plans — short of the collective target of $1.3-trillion that developing countries had hoped for.
Jarvis called SA the vanguard of JETP and confirmed that while there was recognition that the Global North was failing to provide sufficient funding for developing countries, often the developing countries’ lack of urgency, as well as inadequate policy and financial systems, was discouraging faster action.
The World Bank flagged more frequent and severe natural disasters as one of the two main factors posing risks for the country’s economic outlook.
We [Global North] understand the demands and the need, but we need to see progress on the ground that the money is being used effectively... I think that they [funders] are keen to see a more effective strategy.
— Michael Jarvis, Trust, Accountability and Inclusion Collaborative
“SA is vulnerable to more frequent climate shocks as demonstrated by the flooding in the KwaZulu-Natal in April 2022, and the severe drought in several provinces that negatively affected agricultural production in 2024. The World Bank estimates that the overall macroeconomic damages of climate risks could average up to 0.8% of GDP annually between 2022 and 2050,” the World Bank’s SA economic update noted.
Jarvis said: “We [Global North] understand the demands and the need, but we need to see progress on the ground that the money is being used effectively ... I think they [funders] are keen to see a more effective strategy.
“It’s easier to focus the attention on what the Global North is not delivering and legacies of colonialism and all of those things, which are probably justified, but as a distraction from admitting that there are failings in terms of what they [developing countries] have been able to move domestically.”
Despite SA’s vocal demands for climate finance, the department of forestry, fisheries & the environment has confirmed that the country has not secured any financial pledges beyond the existing $8.5bn JETP deal, even though it attended COP29 — dubbed the Climate COP.
“We have neither received any financial promises or pledges during COP29,” the department said. It referred Business Day to the National Treasury and the project management office in the presidency, stating that these institutions would be “in a better position to provide any update”.
“The reality is that an effective climate response requires co-ordination across different ministries,” Jarvis said.
While this challenge was not exclusive to Global South countries, he said, “I hear the frustration when I go to World Bank meetings and others ... You might hear grand words from the president or prime minister, [but] when it gets down to that co-ordination across agencies and saying that these are the things that most matter for us in terms of both reducing our climate emissions, but also being prepared for the effects of climate change and adaptation, that policy coherence and that implementation coherence just isn’t there in the way that it should be.”
The situation was compounded by political uncertainty, which makes investors wary.
While Ramaphosa signed the Climate Change Act into law in July last year, aiming to provide clearer direction on SA’s efforts, it has yet to come into effect.
Update: February 11 2025
The location of the Trust, Accountability and Inclusion Collaborative has been changed from New York to Washington.
Update: February 7 2025
This story has been updated with additional information from President Cyril Ramaphosa’s state of the nation address.
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