The first day of the conference has been devoted to the Opening Session
and the Leaders Event. Heads of State and Government from all over the
world were invited by the French President of the Republic to come to
Paris and to show their support to the 21st Conference of the Parties of
the Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP 21). The response has
been impressive and 150 leaders came to Paris and had three minutes to
deliver a message always supportive and sometimes even demanding. The
expectation was on the speeches by President Obama and Chinese President
Xi Jinping, both sent a supportive message, accepting a binding
agreement with clauses to revise the objectives after fiver years. This
seems to be the most likely outcome if the conference doesn’t lose
track.
But besides the political declarations the debate is also about
money, because if an agreement is reached it has to include the
financial consequences in order to be feasible and not just one more
paper. On December 2009, at COP15, the parties agreed on new ways to
bring together public and private funds to combat climate change. For
this the developed countries pledged to provide new and additional
resources approaching USD 30 billion/year for the period 2010-2012. This
collective commitment was called the “Fast-start Finance” (FSF). Later
on, at COP 19 (Warsaw) the plan was renewed and scheduled to last until
2020. But also a new financial tool has be settled: the Green Climate
Fund (GCF). The aspiration of these
financial instruments is to collect
by public and private funding for developing countries by 2020 “from a
wide variety of sources, public and private, bilateral and multilateral,
including alternative sources" the target figure is USD 100
billion/year.
A recent report recently released by the
OECD gives a deep
understanding of how these financial mechanisms have worked in the last
years. The main figures show that we are still far from the 100
billion/year, certainly an effort has been made but we are still half of
the way and it’s only four years to accomplish the objectives. Public
and private finance mobilised were estimated at USD 62 billion in 2014,
up from USD 52 billion in 2013 and making an average of USD 57 billion
annually over the 2013-14 period.These estimates comprise public finance
provided by donor governments through various instruments and
institutions, including non-concessional loans. It also includes private
funding for climate-related projects that has been directly mobilised
by developed country public financial interventions.
Public finance, either bilateral or multilateral, accounted for
more than 70% of the flows during 2013-14, while mobilised private
finance made up more than 25% and export credits the remainder. The
report by OECD highlights that 77% of climate finance is allocated
towards climate change mitigation objectives, only 16% towards climate
change adaptation and 7% to activities that target both. This result is
driven by the dominance of mobilized private climate finance towards
mitigation-related activities (over 90%). It is striking the small share
for adaptation taking in account that many of the effects of climate
change will already be irreversible, for many regions in the world
adaptation is the only way to cope with the situation, the distribution
of funds should take this in account.
We need, necessary, an agreement but we also need concrete and
substantial finance agreements be taken in Paris if we want real change
happens.