Progress on the Path to $100 billion
17 May 2012
This year’s long term finance work programme provides a critical opportunity for focused and constructive engagement on sources of climate finance and developing country financing needs. 2012 should be a pivotal year for climate finance, as Fast Start Finance comes to an end and developed countries start on the path to US$100 billion per year by 2020
Negotiations on long-term finance have faced significant headwinds in recent years, and analytical work has been limited to ad-hoc and one-off initiatives like the UN Advisory Group on Climate Change Financing, and fora with limited and exclusive memberships such as the G20. If rich countries want to show climate finance is not just another broken promise to poor countries, they must use this year’s work programme to help make significant progress on agreeing to a roadmap to scale up funding over the next eight years to $100 billion per year by 2020.
To help ensure this ambition is realised, ECO would like to highlight the following objectives for the work programme, for consideration by parties attending today’s UNFCCC consultation on its scope
It is vital the work programme contributes to decision(s) at COP18 that make concrete progress towards scaling up finance, including:
– Identifying and advancing promising sources of predictable and assured finance, especially public sources, such as providing guidance to the International Maritime Organisation and International Civil Aviation Organisation on generating financing from measures to address emissions from international shipping and aviation, as well as financial transaction taxes and public finance liberated in developed countries through the elimination of their fossil fuel subsidies
– Providing a roadmap for reaching agreement on a pathway to mobilising $100 billion by 2020, including maximisation of public sources channelled through the Green Climate Fund, an appropriate role for the private sector and a trajectory for developed countries to scale up
– Establishing a shared understanding of developing country financing needs, based on a review of recent literature on mitigation and adaptation financing requirements
– Clear commitments to provide scaled up finance from 2013 onwards, including for the capitalization of the Green Climate Fund
This work is all the more urgent given the link between raising and delivering climate finance and reaching the goal of staying below 1.5/2 degrees C of warming. Scaled up finance to support increased ambition in developing countries is critical to move them towards low carbon development pathways.
In addition to constructive engagement on these areas through the work programme, all parties must be afforded sufficient spin-off group time in Bonn, Bangkok and Doha to participate in defining vital decisions for agreement at COP 18. In this respect it is imperative the Work Programme is seen as a complement to, rather than a substitute for, negotiations involving all parties.