Financial support from developed economies to developing nations which is a critical enabler of climate action has been inadequate, said scientists in the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report highlighting that the promised mobilization of $100 billion under the Paris Climate Accord hasn’t materialized for the developing countries.

India welcomed the much-needed financial support to provide developing countries with the required technology to help cut greenhouse gas emissions. The report emphasized that India has consistently held the position that development is our first defense against climate change.

Further, the IPCC Synthesis Report said that promoting scientific, indigenous, and local knowledge on climate-centric measures is the need of the hour, along with the available global capital to mitigate the rising levels of greenhouse gas emissions.

One of the effective ways to achieve climate goals is increasing and maintaining continuous investments in climate actions and policies, the report said. It added that public funding through investors, governments, banks, and financial regulators can extend all support required to reduce emissions worldwide.

Christopher Trisos, one of the 93 experts who authored the report, said, “Accelerated climate action will only come about if there is a many-fold increase in finance. Insufficient and misaligned finance is holding back progress. The greatest gains in wellbeing could come from prioritizing climate risk reduction for low-income and marginalized communities, including people living in informal settlements.”

However, while countries have pledged to maintain the global temperature below 1.5 degrees Celsius by 2050 and 2 degrees Celsius by 2070, the report projects that the 2050 target already stands breached owing to over a century of burning fossil fuels that has led to global warming of 1.1 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

IPCC stated that if global warming is to be limited to 1.5 degrees, emissions need to be cut by almost half by 2030 from the current levels.

The report said that for every 1,000 gigatonnes (Gt) of carbon dioxide (CO2) emitted by human activity, global surface temperature rises by 0.45°C. The remaining carbon budgets from the beginning of 2020 are 500 GtCO2 for a 50% likelihood of limiting global warming to 1.5°C and 1,150 GtCO2 for a 67% likelihood of limiting warming to below 2°C.

Kroll Bond Rating Agency recently published an analysis stating that with strong financing policies like asset-backed securities, the European Union can generate 680 TW of electricity annually by installing rooftop solar– a quarter of Europe’s current consumption.

The IPCC report said that effective and equitable conservation of approximately 30-50% of the Earth’s land, freshwater, and ocean will help ensure a healthy planet.

Another author Aditi Mukherji said, “Climate justice is crucial because those who have contributed least to climate change are being disproportionately affected. Almost half of the world’s population lives in highly vulnerable regions to climate change. In the last decade, deaths from floods, droughts, and storms were 15 times higher in highly vulnerable regions.”

IPCC reported in 2021 that an increase of 1.5°C in global temperature will cause increasing heat waves, longer summers, and shorter winters. A 2°C rise would have devastating effects like reaching critical tolerance thresholds for agriculture and health, directly impacting the food system and human lives.

According to the International Renewable Energy Agency, global investments in energy transition technologies achieved a historic milestone by reaching a record high of $1.3 trillion in 2022, a 19% increase over 2021 and a 50% jump from the pre-pandemic levels of 2019.