This series of policy briefs provides an independent commentary on current themes associated with the international debate on climates finance. The papers are prepared by the Heinrich Boell Foundation and ODI.
REDD+ finance delivery: lessons from early experience
Climate Finance Policy Briefs, November 2011
Anna Creed and Smita NakhoodaDelivering REDD+ finance has taken more preparatory work, capacity and tailoring than initially envisaged. Multilateral institutions financing REDD+ have made significant progress, and experience to date will inform and facilitate future implementation. Alongside this, Annex II countries are providing increasing volumes of finance through bilateral channels. There remains very little transparency around these bilateral arrangements. It is essential to ensure that the lessons learned through experience with multilateral institutions and participating stakeholders inform bilateral financing.
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Climate finance in Sub-Saharan Africa
Climate Finance Policy Briefs, November 2011
Smita Nakhooda, Alice Caravani, Neil Bird and Liane SchalatekThis policy brief reviews general trends in African climate finance. It considers the key actors in the region and their evolving role in negotiations over the global architecture for climate finance, and finds that funding that is currently delivered is far from fulfilling the demonstrated needs of SSA.
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Design challenges for the Green Climate Fund
Neil Bird, Jessica Brown and Liane SchalatekOne of the achievements of the UNFCCC negotiations in Cancun was the decision to establish a Green Climate Fund (GCF). Many are looking to the establishment of this fund as the solution to adequately and appropriately address climate finance; others caution that ambitious steps need to be taken to avoid the ‘Green Fund’ turning out to be an ‘Empty Fund’ whose function is limited to attaining the buy-in of developing countries into a binding international climate policy regime.
The design of the GCF has to address a large number of concerns, the details of which remain unresolved within the negotiations. Issues relating to what role it will play in providing sustainable finance at scale; how it will fit into the existing development assistance and climate financing architecture; how it will allocate finance to developing countries; and how finance will be delivered effectively, all remain to be clarified. This represents an ambitious agenda and much progress will need to be made quickly if a working proposal is to be put to the delegates at the next COP meeting.
This paper offers an early contribution to the debate by highlighting some of the more pressing design issues and describing the implications of these features.
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Direct Access to the Adaptation Fund: realising the
potential of National Implementing Entities
Climate Finance
Policy Briefs 3, November 2010
Jessica Brown, Neil Bird and Liane
SchalatekThe Adaptation Fund (AF), established by the
Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
(UNFCCC), is mandated to finance concrete adaptation projects and
programmes in developing countries that are Parties to the Kyoto
Protocol and to allow direct access to the Fund by Parties. It is this
latter characteristic – direct access – that has raised considerable
interest among the international climate change community. Civil society
has praised this development as an innovative element of the Fund’s
governance structure that seeks to ensure country ownership. Now that
the AF is fully operational, with two projects approved and six more
proposals endorsed, what is the evidence that the direct access modality
is providing the type of success onlookers are hoping for? This paper
explores the current status of direct access and examines the challenges
countries face in securing its potential.
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here to download the full publication (10
pages, pdf, 629KB)
Climate finance additionality: emerging definitions and their implications
Climate Finance Policy Briefs 2, July 2010
Jessica Brown, Neil Bird and Liane Schalatek
This paper explores how climate finance additionality is being defined by different political actors and what the implications are of these different definitions.
Click here to download the full publication (11
pages, pdf, 320KB)
Where's the money? The status of climate finance post‐Copenhagen
Climate Finance Policy Briefs 1, March 2010
Authors: Liane Schalatek, Neil Bird and Jessica Brown
When the dust settled after the near failure of the UNFCCC climate
talks in Copenhagen, the issue of climate finance seemed strangely to
have been one of the few areas, where despite all procedural and
political misgivings, real progress was made. This is important, as
finance is one of the most urgent issues that needs to be addressed in
order to achieve a comprehensive post‐Kyoto climate agreement. In a last
minute face‐saving political effort by a small group of 28 countries
who negotiated the text at the request of the Danish COP presidency, the
“Copenhagen Accord” was created as a compromise document.
However, it was neither endorsed nor voted on by the full Conference
of Parties (COP) of the UNFCCC in Copenhagen; with the representatives
of the 193 parties only “taking note”. Thus, global climate change
negotiations face political and possibly legal uncertainty going
forward. Some fear that the UNFCCC process has been seriously undermined
and its ability to rally the world to a global agreement cast in doubt.
Among developing countries, distrust is growing over the possibility
that an elite club of countries might attempt to wrestle control over
climate talks permanently away from the 193‐member body. These
uncertainties and tensions play out as well in the area of climate
finance. The “Copenhagen Accord” gives some clear promises and numbers
for both short‐ and long‐term financial support by wealthier countries
for developing countries, especially the most vulnerable, to deal with
climate change. It pledges US$10 billion per year from 2010‐2012 with
the promise to increase to US$100 billion per year starting in 2020.
However, as the Accord is a nonbinding political agreement, many
questions about if and how those commitments can be fulfilled are yet to
be answered.
Click here to download the full publication (9
pages, pdf, 240KB)
