Focusing on Sources: the AGF Workshop

5 June 2010

Making progress on long-term finance is key to unlocking progress on an ambitious package in Cancun.  The upcoming Advisory Group on Climate Finance (AGF) workshop is a chance to clarify questions about the role of the panel and how it connects with the UNFCCC negotiations. Last September, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's first proposed a high level panel at the UN General Assembly.  Early this year, the Secretary-General followed through on his commitment.  In establishing the AGF, he set a path toward agreement on sources of scaled up financing under the UNFCCC to meet the need for climate action in the developing world.  The panel brings together high-level finance officials and Heads of State, who normally aren't closely engaged in the climate negotiations, to make recommendations on climate finance to the UNFCCC. Nevertheless, ECO believes that we can't leave the discussion on sources entirely in the hands of the AGF until just before Cancún.  In order to get a meaningful decision in Cancún on sources of scaled-up financing, the LCA must immediately resume the discussion of innovative sources be informed along the way by the analysis and recommendations of the AGF. To jump-start this exchange, since time is very short, Parties should put the best ideas on innovative sources of public finance into the LCA text now.  These include bunkers mechanisms and/or levies, Special Drawing Rights, a Financial Transaction Tax, and international auctioning of AAUs, all backed up through national commitments to assessed contributions. And here's a special note to developed countries:  For those who might be a little reluctant to press for new and additional funding from your Treasuries each year, remember that innovative sources could provide a substantial boost to reach the annual $100 billion milestone by the end of the decade that you pledged in Copenhagen.

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