The importance of finance to both raising pre-2020 mitigation ambition and getting a successful deal in 2015 cannot be overstated. Right now, climate finance appears to be in no man’s land.
This year should mark the start of a new finance period, given that the Fast Start Finance period ended last year. Instead, we are almost halfway through the year and we’ve seen no new finance commitments beyond the small handful of pledges made in Doha.
This is unacceptable, and ECO thinks that no developed country should be coming back to this process empty handed. Developing countries are facing escalating climate impacts and associated costs. The livelihoods, food security and survival of millions of people are at stake because of a climate crisis they did not create. There can be no justification for holding back on promised finance.
Today’s briefing on the Long Term Finance Work Programme provides delegates with an opportunity to focus on how the process can secure concrete outcomes by COP19. Linking the Work Programme to the COP Ministerial on finance (which crucially must involve finance ministers) is key.
By COP19, we need all developed countries to set out what public climate finance they will provide over the period of 2013-2015 as part of a roadmap for scaling up public finance towards the promised US$100bn per year by 2020. The Green Climate Fund cannot remain an empty shell for a fourth COP in a row. As they start to fill the fund, Parties also need to agree that public climate finance delivered between now and 2020 will be equitably divided between mitigation and adaptation.
Developed country claims that they do not have public money to commit ring hollow. Trillions of dollars have been made rapidly available to pay for wars and bank bailouts. And there are plenty of feasible innovative public sources of climate finance, including financial transaction taxes, switching of fossil fuel subsidies, the closing of corporate tax loopholes, bunker fuel levies and more. The current fixation on leveraging private finance must be redirected towards implementing these public sources.
ECO wants to stress that scaling-up pre-2020 public finance cannot be postponed until COP21. A new, comprehensive climate agreement is very unlikely to emerge if developing countries do not see existing promises being met. Progress between now and 2015 is critical to ambition, and will determine whether climate finance will make or break a deal at COP21.