Global Climate Finance Roadmap Faces Tight Timeline

Developed countries have six months to come up with a roadmap for delivering the US$100 billion per year in climate finance they promised the developing world in 2009, during the United Nations climate summit in Copenhagen.

The deadline for that funding to start is 2020, Oxfam Germany points out in a recent blog post. That reality, combined with elements of the 2015 Paris Agreement, puts donor nations on a tight timeline to put forward a package that “also significantly increases financial support for adapting to the adverse impacts of climate change,” writes Oxfam climate advisor Jan Kowalzig.

“Developed countries have (finally) heard the call—and have begun internal consultations on what this roadmap could look like.” But “the roadmap should not come as a surprise present to developing countries at COP22,” Kowalzig writes. “Instead, it should be crafted with input from, and regular exchange of views with, developing countries. Ideally, the final roadmap would be presented at the pre-COP, the annual ministerial gathering a few weeks before COP22. At the climate finance ministerial dialogue scheduled to take place during COP22, the roadmap could be the basis for agreeing further action to enhance climate finance.

Kowalzig identifies multilateral funding mechanisms, funding for climate change adaptation, mobilization of private finance, new funding sources, and the integrity of the overall process as key priorities for the roadmap to address. “A critical task of the roadmap could also be to outline how financial flows provided (or mobilized) would be made fully consistent with keeping warming below the 1.5°C limit, in particular to avoid lock-in of low ambition,” he writes.

“Specifically, financing for ‘clean’ coal has no role to play in the roadmap,” since “coal is never clean.”

COP 22 convenes in Marrakech, Morocco November 7-18.