We Can Pay For It
There is no shortage of public money available for rich countries to pay their fair share on fair terms for climate action at home and abroad. They can mobilize over USD 5.3 trillion per year for the new climate finance target at COP29, international development needs, ensuring fair fossil fuel phase out in their NDCs, and other public goods.
Download the We Can Pay For it factsheet and the We Can Pay For It Leaflet that shows exactly how rich countries can mobilize over $5 trillion every year for climate action. Use these resources to take action to secure an ambitious new climate finance goal of at least $1 trillion annually at COP29 that delivers the quantity and quality public financing we need in grants, not loans, for adaptation, mitigation, and loss and damage.
Download the Fact Sheet Download the Leaflet
Last year at COP28, governments committed to transition away from fossil fuels. Now, it’s time for rich countries to pay up to make ending fossil fuel expansion and an equitable transition a reality. At COP29 in Baku, they must agree to a new climate finance goal (NCQG) of trillions per year in public grants. This will allow all countries to address climate impacts and deliver national climate plans (NDCs) due in 2025 that phase out fossil fuels.
There is no shortage of public money available for rich countries to pay their fair share on fair terms for climate action at home and abroad. This fact sheet shows how rich countries can mobilize over USD 5.3 trillion per year for the new climate finance target (the NCQG due at COP29), international development needs, ensuring fair fossil fuel phase out in their NDCs, and other public goods. Governments enacting these policy reforms would create a double impact towards a more equitable and climate-safe world by also shifting funds away from the fossil fuel sector and other harmful economic activities, like the super rich and unfair global financial rules.
Because of their outsized control in global financial architecture reform, rich countries also hold the key for many Global South countries to pursue these new, fair, redistributive, polluter-pays measures to raise new public funds. If these are all unlocked, the table shows a total of $10.3 trillion per year could be made available globally for public goods.
The urgency and extent of growing economic inequality, unfair sovereign debt crises, climate disasters, and fossil fuel profits has created significant momentum towards many of these measures in international and domestic policy spheres. Finance has been in the spotlight in most major international political fora in the past few years in recognition that our current financial architecture is a major driver of these overlapping crises.
However, the pace and ambition of policy reform under consideration is not yet ambitious enough to unlock the scale of public funds presented here. Further public pressure, deeper multilateral cooperation among governments championing these asks, and linking the fair finance and climate action agendas at the global level can help unlock further ambition. This will benefit all of us, unlocking trillions in public funding to build an equitable future where everyone can meet their needs.