A key pledge to prevent a full-scale climate catastrophe was for developed nations to commit $100 billion per year to address the current climate crisis. 

It isn’t happening. 

The true value of climate finance is a third of what developed countries report says Oxfam. It reports international climate finance remains flawed and profoundly unfair.

Rich countries are using dishonest and misleading accounting to inflate their climate finance contributions to developing countries – in 2020 by as much as 225%, according to Oxfam.

Oxfam estimates between just $21-24.5 billion as the “true value” of climate finance provided in 2020, against a reported figure of $68.3 billion in public finance that rich countries said was provided (alongside mobilized private finance bringing the total to $83.3 billion).

“Rich country contributions not only continue to fall miserably below their promised goal but are also very misleading in often counting the wrong things in the wrong way. They’re overstating their own generosity by painting a rosy picture that obscures how much is really going to poor countries,” said Nafkote Dabi, Oxfam International Climate Policy Lead. “Our global climate finance is a broken train: drastically flawed and putting us at risk of reaching a catastrophic destination. There are too many loans indebting poor countries that are already struggling to cope with climatic shocks. There is too much dishonest and shady reporting. The result is the most vulnerable countries remaining ill-prepared to face the wrath of the climate crisis.” 

Oxfam found that instruments such as loans are being reported at face value, ignoring repayments and other factors. Too often funded projects have less climate-focus than reported, making the net value of support specifically aiming at climate action significantly lower than actual reported climate finance figures.

Currently, loans are dominating over 70% provision ($48.6 billion) of public climate finance, adding to the debt crisis across developing countries.

“To force poor countries to repay a loan to cope with a climate crisis they hardly caused is profoundly unfair. Instead of supporting countries that are facing worsening droughts, cyclones and flooding, rich countries are crippling their ability to cope with the next shock and deepening their poverty,” said Dabi.

Least Developed Countries’ external debt repayments reached $31bn in 2020.

For example, Senegal, which sits in the bottom third of the world’s most vulnerable countries to climate change, received 85% of its climate finance in form of debt (29% being non-concessional loans), despite being at moderate risk of falling into debt distress and with its debt amounting to 62.4% of its Gross National Income.

“Manipulating the system will only mean poor nations, least responsible for the climate crisis, footing the climate bill,” explained Dabi. “A climate finance system that is primarily based on loans is only worsening the problem. Rich nations, especially the heaviest-polluting ones, have a moral responsibility to provide alternative forms of climate financing, above all grants, to help impacted countries cope and develop in a low-carbon way,” said Dabi.

Climate Finance Short-changed: The real value of the $100 billion commitment in 2019–2020 [EN/AR] – World | ReliefWeb

Concerns about climate change is lessening across the world last year, with fewer than half of those questioned in a new survey believing it posed a “very serious threat” to their countries over the next 20 years.

Globally, the figure fell by 1.5 percent to 48.7% in 2021.

Regions facing the highest ecological threats are on average the least concerned about climate change, with only 27.4% of those in the Middle East and north Africa and 39.1% of those in south Asia concerned about the risks.

Only 20% of people in China said they believed that climate change was a very serious threat, down 3 percent from the last survey in 2019.

A study of 228 countries and territories by the Institute for Economics and Peace found that 750 million people globally are now affected by undernourishment and that climate change, rising inflation and Russia’s war in Ukraine will all exacerbate food insecurity in the future.

The study also showed that more than 1.4 billion people in 83 countries face extreme “water stress,” defined as more than 20% of the population not having access to clean drinking water.

Several European countries are expected to experience critical clean water shortages by 2040, including Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, and Portugal, the report found, while most of sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and North Africa will be affected.

Concern about climate change shrinks globally as threat grows, survey shows | Climate crisis | The Guardian

  Seven million Venezuelans have left their homeland since 2015 amid an ongoing economic and political crisis, according to new UN data. More than half of them face challenges accessing food, housing, and stable employment. But despite the difficulties facing them abroad, the flow of Venezuelans fleeing turmoil in their homeland has not let up.

More than 80% of those who have left Venezuela are living in Latin America and the Caribbean, in countries which often already struggle to provide health and education to their own nationals.  Colombia is hosting 2.48m Venezuelans.

The UN’s Special Representative for Refugees and Migrants from Venezuela, Eduardo Stein, has said that half of all Venezuelan refugees and migrants cannot afford three meals a day and lack access to safe and dignified housing.

 As the UK’s cost of living crisis deepened, nearly one in five low-income families experienced food insecurity in September, meaning more people went hungry than during the chaotic first weeks of the Covid lockdown, the Food Foundation charity said.

Hunger levels have more than doubled since January, according to the foundation’s latest tracker, with nearly 10 million adults and 4 million children unable to eat regular meals last month.

Public health expert Sir Michael Marmot called the rise in hunger “alarming”, and told the Guardian it would have damaging health consequences for society’s worst off, including increased occurrences of stress, mental illness, obesity, diabetes and heart disease.

Millions forced to skip meals as UK cost of living crisis deepens | Poverty | The Guardian

 The media has drawn attention to ex-RAF personnel accepting contracts to work for China.

Yet in the USA  at least 15 retired American generals and admirals have worked as paid consultants for Saudi Arabia’s ministry of defense since 2016.

“Saudi Arabia’s paid advisers have included retired Marine Gen. James L. Jones, a national security adviser to President Barack Obama, and retired Army Gen. Keith Alexander, who led the National Security Agency under Obama and President George W. Bush,” the Post reported. Other ex-servicemembers named in the Post story as paid consultants to the Saudi defense ministry include retired Air Force Brig. Gen. John Doucette and retired Army Lt. Gen. Karl Eikenberry. Some clearly support military operations, such as “battle trainer,” while others are far more general, including descriptions like ‘consultant’ or ‘advisor.'”

“Congress permits retired troops as well as reservists to work for foreign governments if they first obtain approval from their branch of the armed forces and the State Department,” the newspaper pointed out. “But the U.S. government has fought to keep the hirings secret. For years, it withheld virtually all information about the practice, including which countries employ the most retired U.S. service members and how much money is at stake.”

“More than 500 retired U.S. military personnel—including scores of generals and admirals—have taken lucrative jobs since 2015 working for foreign governments” such as Saudi Arabia, Libya, Turkey, and Kuwait, mostly with the official approval of U.S. military branches. “Records show they rarely reject a job request,” the Post found.

Retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, a Trump loyalist raked in nearly $450,000 in payments from Turkey and Russia in 2015 without receiving clearance from U.S. officials.

“Saudi planes literally couldn’t fly if it weren’t for American technicians,” U.S. Rep. Ro Khanna said in an interview last week. 

Defying Pentagon Secrecy, Reporting Exposes Retired US Generals on Saudi Payroll (commondreams.org)

 Around 1.3 million U.S. adults with diabetes have either skipped entire insulin doses, taken less than needed, or put off purchases of the medicine over the past year due to its high cost is a striking indictment of a healthcare system that allows profit-seeking pharmaceutical companies to determine prices at will. Pharmaceutical firms have increased insulin prices year after year, even for products that remain unchanged. Eli Lilly has raised the list price of the commonly used insulin product Humalog by an inflation-adjusted 680% since it started selling the drug in 1996.

The new study, published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, analyzed data from the 2021 National Health Interview Survey, examining a sample representative of 1.4 million U.S. adults with type 1 diabetes and 5.8 million with type 2 diabetes.

The results indicate that 16.5% of all adult insulin users across the U.S. rationed insulin in some way in the past year, with rationing more common among those with type 1 diabetes than type 2.

“Universal access to insulin, without cost barriers, is urgently needed,” Adam Gaffney, an ICU doctor at the Cambridge Health Alliance and the lead author of the study, explained. “We have allowed pharmaceutical companies to set the agenda, and that is coming at the cost to our patients.” He had personally “cared for patients who have life-threatening complications of diabetes because they couldn’t afford this life-saving drug.”

Human Rights Watch (HRW) described insulin access in the U.S. as “a privilege that many cannot afford,” noting that “soaring medicine prices and inadequate health insurance coverage can result in unaffordable out-of-pocket costs that undermine the right to health, drive people into financial distress and debt, and disproportionately impact people who are socially and economically marginalized, reinforcing existing forms of structural discrimination.”

‘A Policy Failure’: 1.3 Million US Adults With Diabetes Ration Insulin Due to High Cost (commondreams.org)

A new category has been added to the latest Federal Reserve Board figures on the distribution of household wealth—the wealth of the wealthiest one-tenth of 1 percent (0.1%) going back to 1989.  the wealthiest .1% have been the recipients of major transfers of wealth during both Democratic and Republican presidencies. 

In 2019, to gain entry into the wealthiest .1% of residents of the United States required one to be worth over $43 million which was about three and a half times the entry point of $11.1 million for the wealthiest 1%.

There is a vast difference between those at the top of the .1%–people such as Musk, Bezos, and Gates–and those at the entry-level. One worth $43 million could not even afford to pay for two years, at $25 million a year, the annual cost to run Bezos’ $500 million yacht. As of September 30, Musk was the wealthiest of the trio. His net worth was put at $238 billion by the  Bloomberg Billionaires Index. That is a sum that is more than 2,300 times greater than that of a poorer member of the .1% who is worth a mere $100 million.

Despite setbacks during economic downturns, the share of the nation’s wealth held by the wealthiest .1% has increased from a low in the third quarter of 1989 of 8.6% to its highest level in the fourth quarter of 2021 of 13%, a more than 50% increase. During the same time, the share of the wealth of the .1% as a share of the wealth of the 1% also increased.

By the fourth quarter of 2021, the wealth holdings of the .1% had gone from being 2.3 times as much as that of the poorest 50%  in 1989 to almost 5 times more. 

The increase in the nominal dollar value (which is the dollar amount disregarding the impact inflation has on its purchasing power) during this period went from $1.76 trillion in 1989 to $18.46 trillion, a more than 10-fold (1,048%) gain which was a rate of growth more rapid than the rate of inflation during the period. It was far greater than the growth rate for the poorest 50% and poorest 90%. The wealth of the poorest 50% increased in nominal dollars 482% from $.77 trillion to $3.71 trillion and the poorest 90% wealth increased 530% in nominal dollars from $8.19 trillion to $43.45 trillion. The result is a more extreme concentration of wealth at the top with the growth of a much greater gap between the .1% and everyone else, even for those within the wealthiest 1%.

The Wealth of the U.S. Wealthiest One-Tenth of One Percent        – CounterPunch.org

Quick quiz

On Monday 17 October Jeremy Hunt had us scrambling to consult the Socialist Standard subscriber list* because we couldn’t believe that he had put the same argument as the SPGB, declaring loud and clear that ‘No government can control markets’ (bbc.in/3yMdtml).

We quibble with the accuracy of what he went on to say ‘…but every government can give certainty about the sustainability of public finances’ (think pandemics / ‘surprise’ wars, etc.) but it’s not our job to argue about the way the capitalist class funds state functions.

The fact is that markets eventually control any government that attempts to administer these state functions. Those markets in turn are governed by the capitalists’ drive for profit, and when Hunt talks about maintaining or restoring confidence, he means that the capitalists need reassurance that states won’t hinder that drive.

Workers should remember this when reformist parties (right or left) promise to introduce order to the system. They won’t. They’re liars or they’re deluded.

*Turns out he isn’t a subscriber, yet.

 Lebanon’s economy has been in freefall with its currency losing more than 90% of its value, fuelling inflation, wiping out savings, and pushing almost three in four of the nation’s 6.7 million people into poverty. 

Lebanese youngsters are paying a high price, with the U.N. estimating that one in 10 of the children pulled from school this past year have been put to work instead. That’s 30,000 children estimated to have dropped out of school this past academic year as parents opt to send children to work or keep them home to save on school fees.  

Many parents could not pay the bills, and the cost of transport and stationery supplies rose by at least 40% last year – even if lessons were free. Education costs mount up very quickly. School clothes is an example of hidden expenses.

 The World Bank said 5% of all private schools closed between 2018 and 2021, as money pressures hit every stratum of society. In the 2020–2021 academic year, 55,000 students shifted from private to public schools, adding extra pressure on an already cash-strapped state sector.

The right to education is enshrined in the constitution and Lebanon  also signed the U.N. Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to provide quality education. Yet the reality on the ground has undermined that goal.

School’s out – forever? Lebanese pull plug on education | Context