Are Developing Countries Satisfied with Half Filled Promises?

8 November 2017

Much more attention needs to be paid to the “big money”. According to the recent joint report from the Multilateral Development Banks in 2016, they collectively committed $27b in climate finance last year €” 4% was in the form of grants.  

Some donors are reporting their loans at face value and not grant equivalent. They also report a high share of loans in their Second Biennial Reports submitted to the UNFCCC Secretariat. France reported that only 2% was provided as grants, Japan 5%, and Germany 45%. Other countries such as Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Switzerland and Canada considered their climate finance to consist exclusively of grants.

Another important topic for COP23 is the many weaknesses in the current UNFCCC system for defining, categorising, tracking, and evaluating climate finance. Although the Standing Committee on Finance is aware of the problems, progress towards improvements is slow.

Secondly, ECO suggests that the UNFCCC’s Common Tabular Format should be improved by including:

• An additional column in Table 7, assessing how much of the country’s core funding of multilateral institutions should be counted as climate finance (“imputed multilateral contributions”).

• ECO suggests that developed countries voluntarily include the above points in the text in the Biennial Report No. 3 to UNFCCC by 1st January 2018.