Stingy climate change spending by donors is forcing poor sub-Saharan countries to revert to their national budgets.

According to a new report by the Overseas Development Institute (ODI), between 2008 and 2011, Ethiopia committed 14 per cent of its national budget to climate change, or nearly half of the national spending on primary education, while Tanzania spent five per cent, which is almost two-thirds of its health spending, between 2009 and 2012.

The report shows that in Ethiopia, climate spending amounts to only six per cent of estimated need, Uganda 10 per cent, while for Tanzania, where more official development aid goes through the budget, it accounts for 59 per cent.

At the 2009 UN climate summit in Copenhagen, most developed nations promised to channel up to $30 billion in “fast start” climate finance to vulnerable countries between 2010 and 2012, rising to an annual $100 billion by 2020. Kenya and other East African nations are in line to receive a share of that aid but this seems not to have pulled through.

ODI executive director Kevin Watkins said that climate change has a huge impact on poor countries, threatening the lives of hundreds of millions of people, what with increasingly unpredictable rainfall, severe droughts and rising sea levels.

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“While richer countries invest heavily in flood-defence systems, coastal protection and other projects, poorer countries in sub Saharan Africa are struggling with these challenges, hence diverting the scarce resources, potentially reversing the progress made in tackling poverty,” Mr Watkins said

To show the inconsistence, between 2008 and 2011, international climate funds contributed $130 million a year to sub-Saharan Africa to adapt to climate change, a fraction of the $1.1 billion that the United Kingdom alone spent on its domestic flood defences in 2008.

According to the report, Ethiopia allocates an average of $440 million a year to climate action with international funding contributing $88 million. Tanzania, on the other hand, spent $383 million annually on climate change related activities. It receives $237 million per year from donor aid against an additional funding of $500 million per year needed to address current climate risks.

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Uganda’s draft climate change policy is supported by an implementation strategy that costs $258 million per year compared with current public spending in the region of $25 million per year.

“Over the four years, both Ethiopia and Tanzania committed $1.5 billion. For countries with such large human development deficits these expenditures come with significant opportunity costs. Spending on climate change runs the risk of crowding out urgently needed spending in other priority areas,” Mr Watkins said.

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Kenya has an average annual spending of $130 million funded through the national budget, to fund climate change activities. It is also estimated that the annual cost of climatic shocks to Kenya alone is $494 billion — about 2 per cent of its GDP. Kenya is also poised to become the biggest aid earner in the region after it was allocated $2.227 billion by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

In April, the British Minister of State at the Department of Energy and Climate Change Gregory Baker announced a $57 million spending on Kenya from the UK’s International Climate Fund.

While there is no correct funding mix between government and donors, the international commitment under the UNFCCC is that vulnerable countries should receive new and additional resources to assist national efforts.

“International funds have been skewed towards helping mainly middle-income countries cut their carbon emissions, rather than helping the poorest countries adapt to the impacts of climate change,” Neil Bird, one of the researchers said.

In addition, climate-related disasters are driving growth in preventative infrastructure spend and in post disaster recovery. This is where a bulk of these East Africa’s government spending goes to with investments in water resources, renewable energy and clean technologies topping the spending charts.

Recently, the Africa Development Bank established a new fund to battle climate change in the continent.