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This week, we detail the key takeaways from the Bonn Climate Summit. But first, the G7 is going back in time...

Top news

50-year low: The G7’s and EU Institutions’ share of aid going to Africa is at its lowest point in 50 years. Just 25.8% of their aid went to African countries in 2022, a level not seen since 1973. That's despite Africa’s population nearly quadrupling since 1973, the largest growth of any region. That aid trend seems likely to continue: In 2024, the EU, France, Germany, and US have announced aid cuts totaling nearly US$9 billion. Overall, aid donors spend 1 out of every 5 aid dollars at home. That not only defeats the purpose of aid spending, but also risks putting struggling countries in a fiscal bind: More than one in five emerging markets and developing countries paid more to service their debt in 2022 than they received in external financing. That number could increase to more than one in three by 2025.

Share of G7 and EU institutions’ ODA to Africa

Source: ONE

Bonn chance: Nearly two weeks of climate negotiations concluded this week with a whimper. The Bonn Climate Change Conference is supposed to be an opportunity for countries to make progress on climate negotiations ahead of the annual global climate summit. The top issue to be settled by the end of COP29 (this November in Azerbaijan) is establishing a new climate finance goal (given a name that only the most cynical bureaucrat could love: “the New Collective Quantified Goal”). But the at-times charged statements at Bonn underscored the chasm between developing and developed countries around a new goal. A lot of work remains to be done before November.

On different pages: The Like-Minded Group of Developing Countries is calling for the New Collective Quantified Goal to be at least US$1 trillion per year. But rich countries have thus far avoided quantifying the goal. Both for the sake of their credibility and to ensure that developing countries have the resources needed to address climate change, developed countries will need to be far more ambitious and forthcoming than they were with the previous (and much delayed) US$100 billion target. In Bonn, developing countries accused developed countries of prioritising loans and private sector financing, saying that those solutions are inadequate and would undermine a just energy transition. Whilst the political will to establish a new climate finance goal that meets countries’ needs may not (currently) exist, the money certainly does: Industrialised countries spend 14 times more on their militaries than on climate finance to developing countries.

Paging Webster’s: Least developed countries are calling for an agreed definition of climate finance. They rightfully see it as “key” for being able to measure and monitor any new climate finance goal. The lack of a standardised definition makes it virtually impossible to track climate finance. We would know: our data experts spent 10 months making sense of the messy data. That messiness obscures the fact that donors are contributing a lot less climate finance than they claim. Our analysis revealed that US$343 billion of purported donor climate finance between 2013 and 2021 was never disbursed or had little to do with climate.

AWOiL: The transition away from fossil fuels – a focal point of COP28 – was absent from the Bonn discussions. Not missing? The influence of fossil fuel companies. Perhaps not coincidentally, this year’s COP29 host, Azerbaijan, says it will continue to expand its fossil fuel production. It’s not alone: G20 countries and multilateral development banks invested US$142 billion into overseas fossil fuel projects between 2020 and 2022, and the world’s supermajor oil companies are doubling down on oil production. Meanwhile, African countries are told to decarbonise. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The fossil fuel industry's web of climate influence

Source: Kick Big Polluters Out

Cometh the tax man?: Azerbaijan has floated a proposal to place a levy on fossil fuel production, though the details remain murky. The proceeds would finance climate action in developing countries and help fill a US$900 billion annual financing gap to achieve the Paris Agreement goals. A proposed fossil fuel levy on OECD countries put forth by civil society groups would raise US$900 billion by the end of the decade.

From the ONE Team

• ONE’s analysis on the G7’s declining aid to Africa was featured in Deutsche Welle and The New York Times.
• ONE’s analysis on debt payments surpassing financing inflows in developing countries, featured in EL PAÍS.
• David McNair’s take on the outcome of the European Parliament elections.
• Ndidi Nwuneli on BBC World discussing this week’s G7 Summit.
• Same s***, different Summit? Not if we can help it.

The numbers

• 200 new climate change lawsuits are filed each year.
• 10 million people in Sudan have fled their homes due to war.
• €130 million: What EU governments earn from rejected visa application fees annually, 90% of which originate from African and Asian countries.

Quote of the week

"A quantum leap this year in climate finance is both essential and entirely achievable."

– Simon Stiell, UN Climate Change Executive Secretary.

What you should read, watch, and listen to:

• The “butterfly effect” of young climate activists.
• There’s no shortage of public money to pay for a just energy transition.
• “Three things we need G7 to do”: An open letter from 49 MPs across Africa.
• Overseas development assistance is being misreported.
• Can the IMF use its balance sheet more effectively to address global challenges?
• Proud to be an ally: standing with LGBTQ+ communities across the world.
• Rejected visa applications to the EU cost applicants more than US$100 million a year.

A look ahead

16-21 June: World Biodiversity Forum, Davos, Switzerland

20 June: World Refugee Day

20 June: Launch of the Gavi Replenishment, Paris, France

The ONE Campaign’s data.one.org provides cutting edge data and analysis on the economic, political, and social changes impacting Africa. Check it out HERE.

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