A Question on Finance

This question was submitted by Andrew Cuddy who was a member of CYD last year.
We can agree that Cancun should, in light of the failure that was Copenhagen, aim to both restore confidence in the UN process and rebuild trust between developed and developing countries.

This is why I was so disappointed when I learned of the full details of Canada’s 400m contribution to developed countries’ 10b per year commitment in short-term climate financing - what the Executive Secretary recently called the “golden key” to progress in the negotiations.

On the one hand, Canada deserves praise for deciding to actually deviate from the US and not make its financing restricted to only those developing countries that choose to associate with the Copenhagen Accord.

But besides this, I find Canada’s short-term financing contribution to be inadequate in a number of ways…
- none of it will be “new and additional” to existing ODA commitments and so will drain funding from anti-poverty initiatives;
- nearly three-quarters of it will be in the form of not grants but loans that developing countries are unfairly required to repay;
- through the World Bank instead of those more transparent and accountable funds that are actually a part of the UN process;
- - and it doesn’t strike any balance between supporting mitigation and adaptation, with only 11% of it being dedicated to help the poorest countries cope with climate impacts.

So given all these details, I have two questions I was hoping you could answer…

Is CANDEL currently not aware that the specific nature of Canada’s short-term financing contribution will likely serve to upset many developing countries and undermine the delicate process of re-building trust?

And if Canada is not tailoring its contribution to be a strategic ‘means’ to help restore confidence in the UN process, then what proactive steps and concrete actions will you be taking here in Cancun to help achieve this key outcome?

— from Andrew Cuddy, an undergraduate student in Earth-Systems Science and Political Science at McGill University in Montreal, Qc.