“A little less conversation, a little more action” needs to be the soundtrack of this year’s Long Term Finance (LTF) Work Programme. The Fast Start period is behind us, and we are already starting the period that we used to call “Long Term Finance”, which makes little sense when it refers to yesterday, today and tomorrow.
We’ve had processes under the UN Secretary General, the G20, and the UNFCCC. But to date these processes have failed to result in any decisions for, or commitments to, a given level of funding from now to 2020. So this year’s work programme must be different from last year’s in one fundamental respect: concrete outcomes on scaling up.
With the LCA finance negotiations behind us, and ADP negotiations on pre-2020 ambition focused on mitigation, this year’s LTF Work Programme is the main space for making progress on finance. If not here, where? If not now, when?
So unlike last year’s work programme, this year’s needs to be firmly geared towards options for decisions in Warsaw. These options then need to be discussed and agreed at the “in-session high-level ministerial dialogue” that the Doha outcome mandated for COP19. Failure to provide concrete options for ministers to consider would likely result in a missed opportunity that developing countries cannot afford.
Today’s Long Term Finance Work Programme event will focus on pathways for mobilisation of climate finance to USD 100 billion per year by 2020. ECO urges Parties to consider that by COP19, we need ALL developed countries to set out what PUBLIC climate finance they will provide over the period 2013-2015, and commit to a roadmap for scaling-up global PUBLIC climate finance, and reaching $100bn per year by 2020. ECO would like Parties to note that COP19 is already very, very late to make decisions on finance that should have been available from the start of 2013.
This year, we need new initiatives and increased ambition to close the mitigation gap and get on a pathway to staying below 2 degrees C of warming. This will be only be possible if there is an assurance that finance will be available for renewed mitigation efforts in developing countries. We also need agreement that a minimum of 50% of all public climate finance between now and 2020 will be spent on adaptation. And the Green Climate Fund must not be left an empty shell for a 4th COP in a row – that’s one broken record we’re tired of listening to.