Green Climate Fund asks donors to dig
deeper in tough financial times
BARCELONA (Thomson
Reuters Foundation) - The Green Climate Fund, one of the main sources of
finance for developing nations to tackle climate change, is hoping wealthy
countries will pledge between $9 billion and $10 billion to refill its coffers
at a conference in Paris on Friday.
Climate finance
analysts said the outcome would be key to building trust with poorer states
preparing more ambitious climate action plans which are due to be submitted to
the United Nations by the end of 2020.
Environment and
development groups are calling for at least $15 billion in new commitments for
the Green Climate Fund (GCF), saying projects that may use up close to that
amount are already in the pipeline, with needs only increasing as the planet
warms.
Lucile Dufour,
international policy advisor with Climate Action Network France, said the GCF
replenishment was happening “at a crucial point in the fight against climate
change”, and called on donors to double their contributions at a minimum.
“This is a matter of
justice and survival for developing countries and the most vulnerable
communities,” she told journalists, noting the devastation from increasingly
wild weather around the world.
The fund’s executive
director, Yannick Glemarec, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation this week’s
meeting would be a “success” if pledges exceeded the $9.3 billion garnered at its
first conference in 2014.
Since late last year
the fund has secured pledges of about $7.4 billion from 16 countries for
2020-2023, with large donors like Germany, France and Britain doubling 2014
contributions.
New announcements from
some other potentially large donors are expected to raise that figure on
Friday, including Japan, Italy, Switzerland, Finland and Belgium.
“It is not easy right
now for any kind of financial contributors to dramatically increase their
contribution because most of them are facing real budgetary constraints,”
Glemarec said, noting some “exceptional efforts” to double donations.
Despite total promises
of just over $10 billion for the fund’s first five years, U.S. President Donald
Trump, a climate-change skeptic, refused to deliver two-thirds of his country’s
$3 billion pledge.
Currency fluctuations
meanwhile further cut the actual total available to the fund, to about $7.2
billion.
Glemarec and others
expressed hope the United States could “re-engage” with the fund in coming years.
Joe Thwaites, a
climate finance researcher with Washington-based World Resources Institute,
said domestic politics meant it was “disappointing but not surprising” that the
United States and Australia had indicated they would not contribute now.
He also urged some
countries whose new pledges were flat or up slightly, like Canada and the
Netherlands, to give more.
A report from the U.N.
climate science panel showed last year that climate action financing, both from
governments and business, had so far been inadequate, Thwaites said.
“There is a very clear
sense that we need to see major increases and particularly for adaptation,
where the needs are only going to rise.”
MORE FOR THE POOREST?
The GCF has allocated
some $5.2 billion to 111 projects in 99 countries ranging from green, low-cost
housing in Mongolia’s polluted capital and a rapid-transit bus system in
Karachi using methane to restoring climate-threatened ecosystems in Namibia.
It expects to have
parceled out the rest of its initial pot by the end of 2019, Glemarec said,
adding he hoped it would be able to grow its project pipeline in future.
Aid agencies praise
the fund’s push to divide its money between projects to reduce planet-warming
emissions and efforts to adapt to climate shifts and rising seas, as adaptation
has received only about a fifth of global climate finance until now.
Glemarec said that
since 2015 nearly 70% of the $1.9 billion the fund had allocated for adaptation
was for projects in the most vulnerable poor countries, African nations and
small island states, stressing the aim was to maintain or raise that share.
Liane Schalatek,
associate director at the Heinrich Böll Foundation North America and civil
society observer at the GCF, said it should increasingly work with approved
ministries and agencies in developing states to reach local communities.
“There needs to be a
focus on the poorest and most disenfranchised people who are usually not given
voice and much opportunity to participate in or benefit from decision-making on
climate change,” she said.
Publish in https://www.reuters.com 24 October 2019