There is still not enough money for climate, even with “blended finance”

Natasha White, reporting for Bloomberg:

Just \$15.5 billion was mobilized globally last year across a total of 84 deals, Convergence, a network of 194 financial institutions, said on Monday. The figure, which doesn’t yet reflect the US government’s retreat from such programs, is down from a peak of \$20.2 billion in 2023. Just 5% of the money raised has gone to the poorest countries where it’s most needed, according to Convergence.

Just another dog-bites-man story about the inadequacy of climate finance, except this fun little nugget:

According to a developing-nation government minister who asked not to be identified discussing private talks, there has been at least one proposal to tokenize biodiversity into something akin to cryptocurrency. After two years of talks, though, it’s still not clear what the commercial bankers behind the proposal intended, the minister said.

No one is allowed to be surprised to find out that some bankers wanted to “tokenize” biodiversity two years ago. In fact, if you were an enterprising commercial banker two years ago, and you didn’t try to put the nature on a blockchain, what were you even doing?

It’s a little surprising, though, that these bankers are still talking about a biodiversity blockchain two years later. But who cares if “a developing-nation government minister” didn’t understand it, as long as the bankers had fun.