Washington, D.C. — A new report from the Center for American Progress and the World Resources Institute raises the possibility of a new U.S. fund—referred to as America’s Climate Fund—that would pool funding from a variety of U.S. private and nonfederal sources to help developing nations reduce greenhouse gas pollution and prepare for the effects of climate change.
The report comes in the wake of President Donald Trump’s decisions earlier this year to withdraw the United States from the Paris Agreement and to seek to eliminate U.S. financial support for multilateral climate initiatives, such as the Green Climate Fund, that promote clean energy and climate resilience in vulnerable developing countries.
In recent months, nonfederal leaders across the country—including businesses, citizens, nongovernmental groups, states, and cities—have committed to take up the mantle of U.S. climate action. These leaders have an important role to play in mobilizing or providing international climate finance, which is a key means of supporting the global climate movement.
One option for continuing U.S. engagement in international climate finance is to create an American climate fund that accepts contributions from a variety of sources and disburses them to existing multilateral finance channels that support low-carbon and climate-resilient development in countries that need assistance.
Such a fund would signal that Americans remain engaged in the global climate effort and would support projects on the ground to aid the poorest and most vulnerable populations.
The report discusses several options for how the fund would be created and how contributions would be disbursed.
Read the report: “How the United States Can Remain Engaged in International Climate Finance” by Gwynne Taraska, Susan Biniaz, Leonardo Martinez-Diaz, Niranjali Amerashinghe, Joe Thwaites, and Howard Marano.
For more information on this topic or to speak with an expert, contact Sam Hananel at [email protected] or 202.478.6327.