As COP30 enters its second week, negotiations are stalled across multiple tracks because wealthy countries are refusing to put real financing for mitigation, adaptation, and loss and damage on the table.
Brandon Wu, Director of Policy & Campaigns for ActionAid USA, said:
“Without support, without climate finance, ambition is impossible in many parts of the world. When it comes to paying climate finance, developed countries have not delivered historically, are not delivering now, and are giving every indication that they will not deliver in the near future.
Without climate finance, the Paris Agreement cannot deliver on its goal of international cooperation climate action. We cannot talk about defending multilateralism without rich countries stepping up and doing their fair share.
The U.S. delegation may not be on the ground in Belém, but its fingerprints are all over the impasse. The U.S. watered down global climate finance goals, failed to deliver on its own finance obligations, and now – through unchecked bullying and militarism – is providing cover to other Global North countries to avoid paying their own climate debt.
The world is watching. It’s time to choose: fossil fuel expansion and militarized borders, or a people‑centered transition funded at the scale the moment demands.”
On the very first day of COP30, the new Fund for Responding to Loss & Damage launched a call for funding requests. That call is backed by just $250 million, a drop in the ocean compared to the hundreds of billions, even trillions, needed every year in developing countries. Yet the United States, absent from the conference but still casting a long shadow, has contributed only $17.5 million to that fund and a mere $2 billion to the Green Climate Fund over the last decade. In contrast, Congress recently approved nearly $200 billion for immigration detention and deportation, dwarfing the climate finance commitments that could save lives.
Wealthy nations have consistently watered down their climate obligations and tried to hide behind private finance. The United States invented the $100 billion goal and then wrote its own rules for counting contributions; now it is pushing the idea that private investors will somehow plug the gap. Meanwhile, frontline communities are already dealing with catastrophic impacts that demand urgent, grant‑based support.
Brandon added:
“Every time negotiators talk about ambition, they try to dodge the real issue: support. No amount of glossy roadmaps or private‑finance schemes can substitute for public funds flowing from the global North to the global South.”
Ends
Brandon Wu is the Director of Policy and Campaigns for ActionAid USA; he has been closely following climate negotiations since 2012. Brandon is an expert on climate finance and fairness and equity globally, with a recent focus on the establishment of the Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage. He is a current board member of the US Climate Action Network, a former board member of Climate Action Network-International and was the elected civil society representative on the Green Climate Fund board during its formative years from 2013-2015. Brandon is available for interviews in at COP30 in Belem.
You can follow Brandon on Blue Sky and X: @brandoncwu.bsky.social @brandoncwu
For media requests, please email christal.james@actionaid.org or call 7046659743.
