We need to stand by our climate pledge to vulnerable nations

Today, President Biden is celebrating the enactment of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), a major landmark for American efforts to address the climate crisis. It is the most ambitious law advancing climate action in U.S. history and will be a boon for all Americans, including by saving households hundreds of dollars a year on energy bills and creating millions of good-paying jobs in the next decade.

Combined with further actions by the federal government, states, cities and the private sector, the U.S. will be able to fully achieve its climate commitment under the Paris Agreement. This is amazing news, but the United States’ role in combating the climate crisis doesn’t stop at its borders. With a solid foundation of domestic action, the U.S. has now gained credibility to engage with international partners.

But the U.S. will need to do more to truly achieve a global solution to this global challenge. It’s now time for the country to deliver on its pledges to help vulnerable developing nations around the world confront the climate crisis, not only to shift their economies onto lower carbon pathways, but also to address the increasingly severe impacts the whole world is facing.

This sweltering summer brought the latest climate impacts to America’s doorstep, from flash flooding in Kentucky to record-breaking heat waves in the Pacific Northwest to the deepest drought in a millennium in the Southwest, which has shrunk America’s largest reservoir to its lowest level since it was created in 1937.

But the human and economic tolls of extreme weather are even more challenging for developing countries that are facing devastating impacts and are equipped with far fewer resources to prevent or respond to them.

In Madagascar, severe drought has led to what the United Nations has called the world’s first climate change-induced famine. In Uganda, flooding led to devastating landslides and in India, Bangladesh and Pakistan, recent torrential rains have displaced thousands of people. Fiji and other island nations are relocating entire villages to escape rising seas — and are increasingly calling for high-emitting nations to assist with the extraordinary costs of relocating people. The impacts of extreme weather can be felt further afield, too — in supply chain disruptions, in crop damage that hurts food security elsewhere, in climate refugees who are forced to move away from their homelands in order to survive.

In September 2021, the Biden administration pledged $11.4 billion in climate finance annually to vulnerable countries to transition to clean sources of energy, protect forests and bolster themselves against climate impacts. If that pledge was fulfilled, the U.S. would be on its way to delivering its share of the global goal to mobilize $100 billion per year for climate action by developing countries. But thus far, Congress has not come close to providing that level of support — and the U.S. is lagging far behind other donors like the European Union, which actually provided (not pledged) $24 billion in 2019.

International leadership on climate change also extends beyond making good on the United States’ existing pledges. At the upcoming U.N. climate negotiations this November, the U.S. must help advance concrete solutions for vulnerable countries that suffer irreversible losses and damages from climate change. Vulnerable countries have expressed frustration that the United States is willing to acknowledge the issue but has not come up with specific channels to provide funding for vulnerable communities when adaptation is no longer enough, such as when they lose their homes or livelihoods.

Not only does the United States have a moral responsibility to support the people on the frontlines of climate impacts, but it’s also in its self-interest to do so. The more able communities are to prevent, adapt or respond to changes in their environment, the more politically and economically stable countries and regions become, reducing security challenges and tamping down on the need for people to flee from their homes for safe harbor.

The upcoming U.N. COP27 summit this November will be held in Egypt, on a continent which is on the frontlines of the climate, food and energy crises. These vulnerable countries and communities don’t need more dialogues or sympathetic words — they need action. The U.S. has a proud reputation of helping others, from rebuilding Europe with the Marshall Plan after World War II to pledging over 1 billion COVID-19 vaccine doses to other countries. It’s critical that U.S. continues to follow in the footsteps of its proudest moments in history. Congress and the Biden administration must promptly deliver on the United States’ commitments to provide financial assistance to vulnerable countries suffering from extreme climate impacts — and show the world that America stands by its word.

Ani Dasgupta is the president and CEO of World Resources Institute.