Developed countries on Friday pledged nearly $10 billion for the UN's flagship climate change fund, offsetting the impact of US President Donald Trump's decision to quit the Paris Agreement against global warming. "I am very happy to announce that we have closed this conference with an envelope of $9.8 billion," Odile Renaud-Basso, director of the French Treasury, told journalists after the latest financing round for the Green Climate Fund in Paris. It exceeded the $9.3 billion pledged at the previous conference in 2014, of which only $7.2 billion has come through so far. The United States had pledged $3 billion but Trump's decision to quit the 2015 Paris accord meant just $1 billion was actually paid. Opening the conference, French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said the new pledges were "ambitious, despite the United States' withdrawal from the Paris Agreement." Several of the 27 donor countries doubled their pledges, including France, Germany and Britain as well as smaller economies like Sweden, New Zealand and Poland.
Japan, which again pledged $1.5 billion, remains the largest single contributor with a total of $3 billion since the fund's creation in 2010.
Copyright Agence France-Presse, 2019
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