Finance
Climate activists bemoan scant progress on finance as Cop29 looms
Finding the finance needed to stave off the worst impacts of the climate crisis will be “a very steep mountain to climb”, the UN has conceded, as two vital international conferences failed to produce the progress needed to generate funds for poor countries.
With less than five months to go before the Cop29 UN climate summit in Azerbaijan in November, there is still no agreement on how to bridge the near-trillion dollar gap between what developing countries say is needed and the roughly $100bn a year of climate finance that flows today from public sources in the rich world to stricken developing nations.
Rich countries have so far given little indication that they are rising to the challenge. The G7 summit of heads of state of the world’s richest countries, in Italy last weekend, skirted the topic of climate finance with warm words on the “importance of fiscal space and mobilising resources from all sources for increased climate and development action, particularly for low-income and vulnerable countries”.
Campaigners said the group’s promises to “work on a coordinated approach” were too vague and had little substance. Harjeet Singh, the global engagement director for the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative, said: “The G7 nations have once again failed to fulfil their obligations in responding to the climate crisis. Wealthy countries bear significant responsibility to developing countries for the harm they’ve inflicted through years of extractive exploitation of resources and the consequent impacts caused by climate change. They owe trillions of dollars annually to hundreds of millions of people suffering and dying from climate impacts.”
Sima Kammourieh, the programme lead at the thinktank E3G, said: “The G7 leaders failed to present the full-fledged, structured and specific economic and financial action plan that is needed for global climate safety. At this juncture, more is needed than menus of options or high-level frameworks.”
Last Thursday, an exhausting fortnight-long meeting of ministers and officials in Bonn, the UN’s climate headquarters, ended with similarly scant concrete result. Mohamed Adow, the director of the Power Shift Africa thinktank, warned that without finance, developing countries could not hope to reduce their emissions and cope with the impacts of the climate crisis. He said: “Developing countries are expected to slay the climate dragon with invisible swords, having got zero assurances on the long term finance they need.”
Simon Stiell, the UN’s climate chief, warned: “We can’t keep pushing this year’s issues off into the next year. The costs of the climate crisis – for every nation’s people and economy – are only getting worse.”
The failures have bruised already fragile hopes of reaching a global settlement that would provide the funds needed for poor countries to cut their greenhouse gas emissions and cope with the impacts of worsening extreme weather.
At Azerbaijan this November, at this year’s conference of the parties (Cop) summit under the UN framework convention on climate change, governments are supposed to agree a new framework for climate finance and a “new collective quantified goal” that would set out how much rich countries should provide to the poorest, and how the money should be collected and spent.
Research by economists Nicholas Stern and Vera Songwe in 2022 suggested about $2.4tn would be needed annually to tackle the climate crisis by developing countries excluding China. Of that sum, about $1.4tn could come from countries’ domestic budgets, leaving about $1tn to come from climate finance sources, such as the World Bank and other development banks.
Developed countries largely agree that such sums are needed, but they are resistant to the suggestion from some developing countries that it should all come from their taxpayers. Instead, they would like to see some come from the private sector, and some from other sources, such as the carbon markets, or “innovative” measures such as levies on fossil fuels, on frequent fliers or on international shipping.
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They also point to the fact that rich petrostates such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar and United Arab Emirates have no obligation to contribute to climate finance, nor do countries with burgeoning economies that are still classed as developing, including China, South Korea and Singapore.
But there is no clarity over how any new forms of finance could be brought to bear. At the Bonn conference, the prospect of some form of levy on fossil fuels was floated but Saudi, UAE and some others were resistant to the idea even being discussed.
While Bonn provided a little clarity on some technical issues, there was little political common ground. In Stiell’s words: “We have left ourselves with a vast amount to do between now and the end of the Cop.”
A girl from a disadvantaged rural family in central China topped this year’s gaokao, attracting numerous live-streamers eager to finance her education, which she declined.
The home of 18-year-old secondary school graduate Han Yaping in a Henan province village was recently bustling with live-streamers.
This attention came after Han achieved an impressive score of 699 out of 750 in the gaokao, China’s national college entrance exam.
She has received offers from China’s two leading universities, Tsinghua University and Peking University.
Han’s accomplishment is particularly remarkable given her family’s impoverished circumstances.
Her mother suffers from ankylosing spondylitis, an inflammatory arthritis affecting the spine, preventing her from working. Her father, who earns a living through farming and odd jobs, serves as the family’s sole provider. Han also has a younger sister.
The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) published a landmark review on Monday that proposes recommendations to regulate the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on the financial decisions made by consumers.
The review, titled the Mills Review, anticipates that both consumers and firms will start delegating “more financial decision-making to AI systems,” including for agreements, initiating transactions, and executing decisions “within agreed parameters.” One of the key findings of the review outlined that while AI can help bridge advice gaps and “support growth,” there remain risks “associated with fraud, cyber security, and consumer harm.” Conducting the review, Sheldon Mills highlighted that “AI can also amplify risks: bias, discrimination, exclusion, opaque decision-making (particularly when multiple AI models interact), misleading or hallucinatory advice and erosion of consumer trust.”
The review stated that presently, one in five adults in the UK are “already open to AI making decisions for them,” particularly when decisions feel “complex or high stakes.” It found that roughly 26 percent of the population “trust general-purpose tools such as ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini for financial advice” with little awareness that such platforms provide no “formal routes to recourse” or protections.
Overall, the Mills Review identified four areas that it anticipates will be impacted by AI in the financial sector: “the transformation of firms,” “new consumer journeys,” “a reshaped competition landscape,” and “amplified financial crime and cyber risk.” The FCA projected the shift in how consumers and firms consult AI to take place by 2030.
The Mills Review put forth seven “priority” recommendations to be considered by the FCA Board. It recommended that any transitions to autonomous AI models be monitored and that regulatory frameworks and perimeters be adapted and secured. The review called for the strengthening of “system-wide coordination and oversight,” the scaling up of the FCA’s AI Lab to enable it to support AI models and innovation for agentic finance, and an “AI-enabled agentic supervisory model” to be built and adopted. Finally, it recommended that a trusted “public-interest AI-enabled financial capability service” be developed.
The FCA announced, in the press release, that it will launch an AI “good and poor practice publication” in late 2026.
Finance
Fayette County Public Schools Board of Education approves audit contract, new finance director position
LEXINGTON, Ky. (WKYT) – The Fayette County Public Schools Board of Education approved a one-year audit contract capped at $131,750 plus $225 per hour during a virtual meeting Monday, along with a new finance director job description.
The contract is with Mauldin & Jenkins Certified Public Accountants, an Atlanta-based firm, and covers the 2025-26 fiscal year and the restatement of the 2024-25 fiscal year and ancillary services through FY 2029-2030. The work is set to be completed by Nov. 15.
The board approved the contract in a 5-0 vote.
Audit contract details
Interim Chief Financial Officer Kyna Koch said the cost is already accounted for in the district’s budget.
“And is actually less than we expected given our current situation — we were thrilled with the bid,” Koch said.
Koch said she believes this is Mauldin & Jenkins’ first school district audit in Kentucky, but that the firm works with school districts of more than 100,000 students throughout the Southeast.
“Quite frankly when I spoke to the folks at KDE they were thrilled because we’re running kind of short of auditors who want to do school district audits — so all around I think this was a win-win for everyone,” Koch said.
New finance director position
The board also approved a new job description for the position of Director of Finance. Acting Superintendent Dr. Bill Bradford said the title will replace two associate director positions.
“Which will not only save the school district money but it’s also going to streamline our work and align internal controls to make room for a more efficient unit,” Bradford said.
Koch said the position will be posted as soon as possible following the board’s approval.
Closed session
The board went into closed session for more than an hour to discuss pending investigations that could lead to employee discipline. When the board returned, it took no action and adjourned the meeting.
Copyright 2026 WKYT. All rights reserved.
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