Side-Stepping Finance

18 November 2013

Now that Parties’ proposals for decision text came in late on Saturday, negotiations on long term finance can start in earnest as we start the second week in Warsaw. 

But ECO wonders if some of the submissions were written in a rush on the way to the NGO non-party, considering how they drove past the crunch issues with only a passing glance. A case in point: the text by several Umbrella countries ticks the boxes for Noting, Recognizing, Welcoming and Reiterating, but somehow leaves out Committing.

As well, their text fails to accept that the 2020 US $100 billion goal requires actual scaling-up of finance. Fortunately, this important assurance can be found in the proposed text by the G77 and China, just a bit above a paragraph that deals with another crunch issue: the urgent need to fix the imbalance between funding for mitigation and adaptation – another topic skillfully avoided by the Umbrellas.

The need for predictability of finance is supported in South Korea’s proposal to craft a global climate finance roadmap. That could include intermediate finance levels towards 2020, set disbursement targets for key multilateral climate funds, plan collective action to mobilize additional finance, etc.

And the G77 and China suggest not only an intermediate finance level for 2016 but also a requirement for developed countries to prepare their pathways for scaling up from fast start finance towards 2020, outlining projections and scenarios for various sources and channels of finance countries aim to deploy.

What does the Umbrella countries’ text have to say about predictability and pathways? As they say under the red-white-and-blue Umbrella, “three strikes and you’re out!”

Finally, the G77 and China have proposed an open ended working group to ensure continuous progress on climate finance. For this to work, it is important to clearly spell out the functions and expected results of such an undertaking, and to set it up at a reasonably high political level so it does not get downgraded in the final hours at Warsaw to being just another extension of the work programme.