China needs to spend more to boost global climate finance given its increasing economic clout, the EU’s Climate Commissioner Wopke Hoekstra told Euractiv on Tuesday.
In 2024, the EU contributed more than €30 billion to global climate finance, making the bloc the biggest donor. China, the world’s second-largest economy, has yet to contribute beyond bilateral support. Meanwhile, developing countries are pushing for €1.3 trillion in support, up from €100 billion in previous years.
“What is true and that is not a statement by me, but by the United Nations, according to them, China is an upper middle income country. And they have done an amazing job in terms of creating affluence,” Hoekstra said at Euractiv’s Energy & Environment Policy Conference.
With their newfound wealth, Beijing, Singapore and the gulf states are “truly invited to … make sure that we deal with this problem more effectively and put more money on the table,” he added. “Europe just simply doesn’t have the pockets to do that by itself.”
The EU has long been pushing for Beijing, which continues to insist on its 1990s classification as a developing country, to officially contribute to global climate financing benchmarks.
The US exiting the Paris Agreement was “truly impactful,” he said. But China’s share of global emissions was around 30%, while the US amounted to just 11.5%, he added.
At the New York Climate Summit in September, China pledged to cut emissions between 7 and 10% by 2035 from peak levels, without indicating the baseline year for this calculation. The figure was immediately slammed as “disappointing” by Hoekstra.
“A number that is potentially below 10% has not only huge ramifications for China, but simply also for climate action going forward,” he confirmed on Tuesday.
(jp)
