Finance: Flashback or Fast Forward?

31 May 2010

While seriously short of the mark, some limited progress was made on climate finance in Copenhagen. Developed countries promised to mobilise $100 billion per year and resolved to establish a new fund to deliver it.  All that opens the door to to fast-forward, not slow-walk, this building block in 2010. Cancún must offer more than just a flashback, a rehash of weak pledges. To unlock wider progress in the negotiations, Cancún will need to deliver a robust agreement on:

* Financing institutions, including establishment of a new fund under the UNFCCC and provisions for its  governance.

* Scaling up new, additional and predictable climate finance through innovative sources, using the finance targets agreed in Copenhagen as a milestone for progress.

* Institutions, guidelines and procedures for measuring, reporting and verifying support for climate actions as well as the actions themselves, including a registry for both actions and support.

The task here in Bonn is to define clearly and lock in the loose pledges of Copenhagen, and provide a road map towards ambitious, binding finance commitments in Cancún. This will mean continuing the discussion of sources in the AWG-LCA so that negotiators can take the appropriate recommendations of the Advisory Group on Climate Finance (AGF), build on them, and agree a package of new sources that can meet the scale of needs. It will also mean clarifying the minimum scale of public finance required, to turn big numbers into meaningful commitments. Finally, it will mean taking a practical, no-nonsense approach to texts on architecture and governance to deliver finance that works for the developing countries it is meant to assist.

Real progress on climate finance at this session here in Bonn offers the best chance to lift the cold, damp, Copenhagen fog and reveal the path to sunny success in Cancún.