I was a little puzzled when I read this article saying that Japan is giving 10 billion US dollars in aid to African nations to tackle climate change. The article gives very little details, but I wonder if this is the best use of funds. If the objective is reducing climate change, wouldn’t spending 10 billion dollars domestically in Japan give a bigger bang for buck, since emissions in Japan are much higher than in Africa and probably easier to reduce? And if the objective is African welfare, wouldn’t 10 billion dollars of food-related aid improve welfare more than reducing climate change? Obviously I am basing this opinion on very few facts, but it seems to me that mixing two policy objectives together like this is a suboptimal way to achieve either of them.