Breaking down the global climate change agenda

Developing, implementing, and enforcing an agreement on climate change is intensely complicated. Recent positive news is that the 17th meeting of the Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, or COP-17, which ran from Nov. 28 to Dec. 11 in Durban, South Africa, provided some strategic direction and kept the climate change debate alive. Still, it is very difficult to determine exactly where the international community collectively stands on the global climate change agenda and how bilateral financial commitments to achieve that agenda will be affected. Official public statements and assessments in the aftermath of Durban have been inconsistent. A few examples: “What we have got is a very significant step forward because we’ve got a road map leading to a global overarching legal agreement,” U.K. Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change Chris Huhne, a party to the talks, said shortly after the Durban conference. On the other hand, environmental activist and Greenpeace International Executive Director Kumi Naidoo had this to say: “Right now the global climate regime amounts to nothing more than a voluntary deal that’s put off for a decade. This could take us over the two degree threshold where we pass from danger to potential catastrophe.” While the roadmap is not completely clear and obstacles remain, many believe that the Durban conference concluded with some modest accomplishments and realistic targets including the extension of the Kyoto Protocol until 2017 or 2020 depending on future negotiations, a mandate to draft a new comprehensive climate treaty, and the establishment of the Green Climate Fund. These decisions will continue to impact how much money is available for climate change programs. During the 2009 U.N. Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark, developed countries committed to provide “scaled up, new and additional resources” for climate change adaptation and mitigation under the $30 billion UNFCCC Fast Start Finance program for 2010-2012. Basically, these bilateral contributions, mandated and monitored through the UNFCCC, help developing countries protect themselves from and cope with the consequences of global warming. Perhaps more importantly, the Fast Start Finance program was intended to build confidence in the international climate change system and negotiations. Despite year to year declines from 2010 to 2012 due to hefty initial investments to get Fast Start Finance off the ground, it appears that developed countries are generally on track to meet their collective $30 billion commitment. Based on Devex research and analysis, total climate change aid – defined as the sum of programmable climate change budgets by donors with a minimum obligation of €100 million ($130 million) for Fast Start – amounted to $31 billion from 2010 to 2012. That included some $12.4 billion in 2010 to launch Fast Start Finance; an impressive $7.2 billion of which came from Japan that first year. To be clear, however, much of this financing is not new and additional, with some donors diverting funds from existing climate change aid programs to fulfill their Fast Start obligations. For example, Japan redirected about $10 billion initially pledged for its Cool Earth Partnership for Fast Start Finance instead. As we enter 2012 and Fast Start begins to expire, UNFCCC recognized the need to establish a framework for longer-term bilateral commitments. The Durban conference helped conceptualize the Green Climate Fund which aims to address the needs of developing countries as they cope with climate change by mobilizing $100 billion annually by 2020. This fund is considered crucial to an eventual climate deal, serving as compensation for developing countries agreeing to reduce emissions and pollution. Hence, as part of the Durban Package, the U.K. promised 6 billion pounds ($9.4 billion), Germany €40 million, and Denmark €15 million to set up the Green Climate Fund. Where is all this money going? While there are various categories for climate change programming, bilateral climate change aid can effectively be broken down into the following areas: - Adaptation: Activities designed to reduce vulnerability to the impacts of climate change and climate-related risks by increasing adaptive capacity and resilience through capacity-building programs, research and assessments, and disaster risk reduction and risk management. - Mitigation: Activities that stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere by reducing or limiting GHG emissions and enhancing GHG sequestration through the promotion of low-carbon electricity, energy efficiency, use of renewable energy, and GHG destruction (e.g. biogas or landfill gas). - REDD+: Activities that create a financial value for the carbon stored in forests by reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation through conservation and sustainable management of forests. - Multilateral: Multidonor climate funds such as the Clean Technology Fund for mitigation, the Global Environment Fund for adaptation, and the Carbon Fund for forests. Climate change adaptation spending remained at constant levels, from 13 percent in 2010 to 14 percent in 2012. But it peaked at 17 percent in 2011, reflecting calls across the international development community to provide equal funding for adaptation and mitigation initiatives. Realizing that prevention is as important as mitigating the impacts of climate change, several countries scaled up their adaptation finance. With a programmable adaptation budget of €214 million, France provides technical assistance to African countries in framing national adaptation programs and in implementing pilot adaptation projects. Likewise, Australia disbursed an additional 178.2 million Australian dollars to continue adaptation programs (policy and technical assistance) for vulnerable countries in the Asia-Pacific region, as well as in the Caribbean and Africa. Nonetheless, more needs to be done if funding for adaptation and mitigation would enjoy the same levels. For each year in 2010-2012, mitigation received the largest share of total climate change aid. The apparent drop in mitigation commitments from 61 percent in 2010 to 20 percent in 2012 can be traced back to Japan, which contributed $6.3 billion to mitigation in 2010 or nearly half of donors’ total $13.7 billion commitment over the three years. Japanese mitigation aid of $9.4 billion funds climate change policy formulation and promotion of renewable energy sources (wind, geothermal, and solar) in Africa, least developed countries, and small island developing states. Recognizing that deforestation is one of the major causes of GHG build-up (the other being the burning of fossil fuels), funding for REDD+ increased from 10 percent in 2010 to 13 percent in 2012. Several donors, specifically France, Germany, and the U.K., prioritized forest conservation and the promotion of reforestation in their climate change programs. Germany has made available €236 million for REDD+ initiatives, disbursing €94.9 million to date. This funding financed the promotion of conservation and sustainable use of forests in the Congo Basin, as well as the conservation of forests and biological diversity in Brazil among other projects. Similarly, the U.K., which aims to be the “greenest government ever,” allotted 308 million pounds for curbing deforestation and ensuring the protection of forests in Burkina Faso, Laos, Peru, Indonesia, Mexico, Ghana, Brazil, and the Democratic Republic of Congo; as well as tackling illegal logging in these areas. Donor support for multilateral climate change initiatives increased from 13 percent in 2010 to 15 percent in 2012, and peaked at 23 percent in 2011. This increase can be partly attributed to the proliferation of multidonor climate financing mechanisms. Major multilateral initiatives enjoying continuous donor support include the World Bank-managed Clean Technology Fund, the U.N.-managed Global Environment Fund, and the Global Environment Facility. The Clean Technology Fund aims to promote the use of low carbon technologies. The Global Environment Fund assists in addressing development, climate change, and ecosystem sustainability in an integrated manner. The Global Environment Facility provides grants to developing countries for projects related to climate change, land degradation, and the ozone layer. Finally, climate finance that is yet to be allocated spiked dramatically from 2 percent in 2010 to 37 percent in 2012. The bulk of this increase is due to Japan’s unallocated climate funds, which account for $2.4 billion of the total $3.7 billion yet to be programmed for this year. The Green Climate Fund may very well help facilitate climate change financing through 2020, but there is still a lot of work to do. The next multilateral forum which tackles climate change-related issues is the U.N. Conference on Sustainable Development, or Rio+20, scheduled for June 2012. The main goal of the conference is to close the gap between the environmental and developmental agendas by prioritizing the issues of sustainable energy for all, universal access to water, and protection of the world’s oceans. Christine Dugay contributed to this report. Read more: - Going green: Top 10 bilateral climate change donors in 2010-2012 - Online and Offline: Global Advocacy Lessons from Greenpeace - Early intelligence, projects and tenders on climate change