President Joe Biden is using a historic trip to the Amazon on Sunday to highlight that US bilateral climate financing increased to $11 billion this year, meeting a pledge he made.
“The fight against climate change has been a defining cause of President Biden’s leadership and presidency,” the White House said in a statement ahead of Biden touching down in the Brazilian city of Manaus, in the Amazon.
Biden is making his last swing through South America before handing over the presidency to Donald Trump — a climate-change skeptic.
The first sitting US president to make a trip to the vast tropical rainforest, Biden is to meet with Brazilian Indigenous leaders and sign a declaration making November 17 an International Conservation Day.
The White House announcement of the $11 billion figure said that made “the United States the largest bilateral provider of climate finance in the world.”
It said the amount was six times what the US was providing at the start of Biden’s term, in 2021.
The European Union, however, remains the biggest global contributor to climate financing.
Around half of all climate financing goes through multilateral funds that are co-managed by developing countries. That has spurred criticism of the US preference for bilateral funding.
Rich nations raised $116 billion in 2022 in climate finance, according to the latest available data from the OECD.
According to one study by British think tank ODI, the United States ranked second to last among 23 nations for progress toward providing a “fair share” of climate financing, based on their carbon footprint, population size and gross national income.
Biden’s Amazon stop is being squeezed between an APEC summit he attended in Peru, and a G20 summit in Rio de Janeiro he will take part in that starts Monday.
Climate will be one of the topics on the G20 table, as negotiations taking place the same time at a UN climate summit in Azerbaijan appeared to stall.