By Bunmi Yekini
Bonn, Germany – June 19, 2025 — As global climate negotiators gather in Bonn to deliberate on key frameworks like Article 2.1c and the Baku to Belém Roadmap, international organisation ActionAid has issued a stark warning: private finance is not a solution to the climate crisis, it’s a disguised vehicle for exploitation.
Teresa Anderson, Global Lead on Climate Justice at ActionAid, criticised the growing dependence on private sector investments to bridge the yawning gap in global climate finance.
“A consistent message we hear from rich countries at climate talks is that their pockets are empty, there’s no public finance, and that private finance is needed to ‘fill the gap’ in climate finance,” Anderson said.
But she argued that this reliance is deeply flawed. “It’s not that private finance is ‘low quality’ climate finance. Private finance is the way for financial actors in rich countries to scale up their extraction, profits, and global leverage over the Global South,” she warned.
Calling it a “Trojan Horse,” Anderson urged developing nations to be wary of mechanisms that may deepen inequality under the guise of climate aid. “When it comes to climate change, Private Finance is a Trojan Horse. At climate negotiations, developing countries need to say ‘neigh’,” she concluded.
The climate talks in Bonn continue this week as countries debate pathways toward just and effective climate action in the lead-up to COP30 in Belém, Brazil.