UN Climate Chief: World Needs $2.4 Trillion in Climate Finance Annually to Keep Goals Within Reach

Simon Stiell, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, speaks during a plenary session on day thirteen of the UNFCCC COP28 Climate Conference in Dubai, United Arab Emirates on Dec. 13, 2023. Fadel Dawod / Getty Images

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In a speech in Azerbaijan on Friday, United Nations climate chief Simon Stiell said the world needs at least $2.4 trillion each year to keep global climate goals within reach.

Stiell, the executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, gave a timeline of the measures — and funding — that will be needed to implement Paris Agreement goals and keep Earth’s temperature below 1.5 degree Celsius.

“We must spend the year working collectively to evolve our global financial system so it’s fit-for-purpose, with a clear plan to meaningfully execute the climate transition,” Stiell told students at Baku’s Azerbaijan Diplomatic Academy. “Looking at the numbers, it’s clear that to achieve this transition, we need money, and lots of it. $2.4 trillion, if not more.”

Azerbaijan is set to host the COP29 climate summit this November.

It was the first major speech Stiell had given since COP28 in Dubai last year, reported Reuters.

“$2.4 trillion is what the High-Level Expert Group on Climate Finance estimates is needed every year to invest in renewable energy, adaptation, and other climate-related issues in developing countries, excluding China,” Stiell said in the address. “Whether on slashing emissions or building climate-resilience, it’s already blazingly obvious that finance is the make-or-break factor in the world’s climate fight – in quantity, quality, and innovation.”

The major focus of the climate conference in Azerbaijan will be climate finance. Governments will be asked to come up with a new goal for raising capital after 2025 for developing countries’ efforts to adapt to the effects of climate change and reduce fossil fuel emissions, Reuters reported.

Just last year, nations met their 2009 goal of $100 billion annually for climate finance by 2020.

“[W]ithout far more finance, 2023’s climate wins will quickly fizzle away into more empty promises,” Stiell said. “We need torrents – not trickles – of climate finance.”

By next year’s COP30 in Brazil, nations will need to have new, more forceful pledges ready for reducing emissions, as well as the funds to make them a reality, UN climate officials said, as reported by The Associated Press.

“Climate finance must not be quietly pilfered from aid budgets,” Stiell said in the speech. “2024 is the year multi-lateral development banks must demonstrate – with concrete actions – their centrality in the world’s climate fight, and their determination to deliver impact at scale. They should take bold steps towards financial innovation that will double, if not triple, their collective financial capacity by 2030 — particularly with respect to grants and concessional finance.”

Stiell warned against taking “victory laps” following the Global Stocktake agreement at COP28 in Dubai, considering there is so much work to be done.

“It will take an Olympian effort over the next two years to put us on track to where we need to be in 2030 and 2050. In fact, the action we take in the next two years will shape how much climate-driven destruction we can avoid over the next two decades, and far beyond,” Stiell said.

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