As the climate negotiations unfold, ECO can’t help but notice a troubling development — some negotiators are confusing ‘funds’ with ‘goals’.
Let’s break it down. There are various funds under the UNFCCC: the Green Climate Fund (GCF), the Adaptation Fund (AF), the Global Environment Facility (GEF) with the Least Developed Countries Fund (LDCF), the Special Climate Change Fund (SCCF), and the recently created Loss and Damage Fund. These are financial mechanisms and channels under the Convention and the Paris Agreement. They are not climate finance goals. Got it? Good.
It is absolutely essential to solidify loss and damage as the third pillar of climate action, alongside mitigation and adaptation. So it’s a first tier priority that the Loss and Damage Fund is fully operationalised and adequately capitalised – as soon as possible. The Fund is the third operating entity of the UNFCCC Financial Mechanism, which puts it on par with the GCF and the GEF in importance – although not yet in developed countries’ funding support.
Just because we have the new fund doesn’t mean we can skip having a distinct, thematic sub-goal on Loss and Damage within the New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG) – that would be illogical. The true logic goes the other way. Because we have a new fund that needs to be capitalised, providing finance for loss and damage should be in the NCQG.
But some negotiators seem to be twisting this logic deliberately with statements along the lines of ‘we already have a fund, so Loss and Damage doesn’t need to be in the NCQG’, or ‘the need for finance for Loss and Damage should be expressed through the Fund’.
ECO has to stress yet again – a fund is not the same as recognition and support under the finance goal. That would be like saying that the Adaptation Fund’s existence means adaptation needs can be solely expressed through that (likewise chronically underfunded) mechanism, and therefore does not need to be tackled in the NCQG.
Let’s not get the logic twisted like the pretzels in the coffee stand! The NCQG goal must be ambitious and aspirational on mitigation, adaptation, and loss and damage alike, with funds as vehicles to turn these aspirations into support on the ground.