We get the impression that Germany likes being ahead of the curve, it appears that Germany is leading the pack when it comes to what developed countries are doing on climate finance. Last year, was the first country to pledge to the Green Climate Fund. This year, just two weeks ago, at the Petersberg Climate Dialogue, Chancellor Angela Merkel announced to double the German climate finance by 2020.
ECO has been told that this is no empty pledge, and it actually refers to public finance from the government budget which is currently said to be approximately €2 billion a year, and set to become €4 billion a year by 2020. And so you know, Germany, we’ll be watching you.
It’s not just Germany that we’ll be watching though. ECO is excitedly looking around for others—yes, that’s you developed countries—to take up the challenge and use what time remains before Paris to prepare for their own announcement to match that of Germany. matching . France, the US and Japan, please, no cheeky accounting of loans, including non-concessional ones, at face value, to look bigger than you are. Remember, we’re watching.
The other thing Merkel did was to call on developed countries to draft a roadmap of how to meet the US$100 billion promise, and an important push for its peers. For years, developed countries have refused to present such a roadmap, ignoring repeated asks by the developing world and undermining trust in this process. Germany seems to have united with ECO now, understanding that such a roadmap may become a pre-condition for success in Paris. ECO suggest that the rest of the developed world trust Merkel’s political intuition and follow her call.
Any useful roadmap would naturally have to provide sufficient clarity on quantitative and qualitative aspects. This may cover by what level annual public finance will increase between now and 2020, the intended division between mitigation and adaptation (or between grants and loans), and the use of innovative sources to cough up new public finance, etc.
While developed countries contemplate these ideas; ECO eagerly awaits Merkel’s next step. Next weekend’s G7 Summit—with climate finance and the $100 billion promise on the agenda—could be a useful opportunity to rally support for crafting her desired roadmap.
To give comfort to those developed countries jealously reading all of this praise being heaped on Germany, rest assured that ECO will also examine its performance on export credit financing for dirty coal on its record. A black stain on its climate financing record. Watch this space.