The helpful elves of ECO were disappointed to report yesterday that the workshop on Long-Term Finance (LTF) failed to meet our expectations in that it didn’t actually discuss the key elements within the framework of LTF.
Here is a reminder to our friendly delegates what the aims of the LTF process are; hopefully this will get you back on track for today’s session:
To quote the Convention itself: “COP19 requested the secretariat to organise in-session workshops to facilitate continued deliberations of Parties on, inter alia, strategies and approaches for scaling up climate finance, cooperation on enhanced enabling environments and support for readiness activities, and on needs for support to developing countries from 2014 to 2020.”
Our ECO elves waited in anticipation for such issues and ideas to be broached yesterday, but eventually left the room deflated. The concrete strategies to scale up finance didn’t get mentioned, nor did the topic of support and enabling environments.
Needless to say, the US$100 billion elephant in the room lingered until we approached the end of the workshop, with little mention of how to reach the goal or speedily deploy funds to vulnerable countries.
But all is not lost, dear delegates! With another full session today, there is still enough time to re-capture the objectives of the LTF process and address the most crucial aspects. Time that should be used to discuss methods to scale up public finance, particularly for adaptation, and talk about the readiness of developing countries to speedily and effectively deploy funds.