WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama will pledge $3 billion to an international climate fund aimed at helping developing countries prepare for and slow the effects of climate change, a White House official said Friday.
The U.S. pledged the money to the United Nations Green Climate Fund, an integral part of the international effort to craft an agreement to address climate change. The fund, created in 2011, asks industrialized countries and their private sectors that pumped most of the greenhouse gases into the atmosphere over the last century to now provide aid to developing countries so they can shift to low-carbon fuel and adapt to the effects of climate change.
Research has shown that the poorest countries that emitted the least greenhouse gases, such as those in Africa, stand to suffer the most damage from global warming.
“It is in our national interest to help vulnerable countries to build resilience to climate change,” the official said in a statement. “More resilient communities are less likely to descend into instability or conflict in the aftermath of extreme climate events, needing more costly interventions to restore stability and rebuild.”
The White House announced the U.S. pledge as the president traveled in Asia. It comes on the heels of a new climate change agreement between the U.S. and China, considered a milestone in the push for international cooperation to reduce carbon emissions.
Obama was due to arrive in Brisbane, Australia, later Friday for an economic summit of the Group of 20 nations.
Advocates quickly welcomed the commitment.
“A $3 billion U.S. pledge to the Green Climate Fund would be an important show of American leadership to help the most vulnerable people in the world protect themselves from dangerous climate impacts and to ensure a coordinated global response to climate change,” said Heather Coleman, climate program manager for Oxfam America, who noted that the pledge is similar to American commitments to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.
Mexico, Korea, Germany, France and Japan are among the countries that have already pledged to contribute.
The fund is essential to getting developing nations to sign on to a climate pact international negotiators will present in Paris in December 2015. The U.S. pledge arrives as countries prepare for a conference on their pledges in Berlin beginning Wednesday. The U.N. seeks to have at least $10 billion in commitments to the fund by the end of 2014, and so far, $3 billion total has been pledged by nations including France and Germany. The U.S. pledge is the largest to date, and analysts said they hoped it would spur countries such as Japan and the U.K. to step up with generous pledges, too, in Berlin.
Ultimately, the U.N. hopes to get developed countries and industry to marshal $100 billion annually by 2020 to help the developing world. The World Bank estimates that damage related to global warming costs the world economy $200 billion annually.
The American commitment would be paid out over four years and could come from funds already allocated to other international efforts.
Still, the pledge elicited a strong backlash from Republicans who will take control of Congress in January.
