As negotiators prepare their last-minute assessments of the finance section, ECO doesn’t think that it’ll be too hard to guess which Parties will be rather happy with how the finance section of the Geneva text was distributed across the co-chairs’ tool.
Part One (to become the core agreement) contains useful language on some aspects. Yet, it fails to include any constructive proposals to organise the mechanics of future financial support. For some reason, these were thrown into Part Three. ECO is puzzled, because what would go into a treaty if not the mechanics? This needn’t frustrate delegates, since ECO has been assured many times, Part Three is not a dumping ground of any kind.
ECO will be looking out for suggestions to move some of the key ideas from Part Three into Part One. For example, the countless references to needs assessments to ensure climate finance is matching The needs would logically be placed in Part One. Also, counting the number of paragraphs that suggest setting (and regularly updating) some form of targets for the provision of financial support should also belong to the core mechanics of future support. For instance, by setting collective targets every five years, based on above-mentioned assessments of support requirements, with separate targets for adaptation. Obviously, developed countries, but also countries with comparable levels of responsibility for the problem and capability to act, would contribute to meeting those targets.
Part One is not completely empty, of course: a general commitment for certain countries to provide support can be found in quite a few variations. Similarly, ECO spotted useful language that at least 50% of financial support should be allocated to adaptation. And there is a reference to the role of innovative sources of finance which, if tweaked, could get us exploiting the potentials to generate new and additional public finance. We have something to start with, but only if mixed with some of the {strong} ingredients from Part Three will we get a decent Article $: Provision of Financial Support.