Could US Congress Kill Climate Funding?

Posted on 04. Dec, 2010 by astark in U.S.A.

Things are starting to heat up at the UN climate talks in Cancun. The increased energy in the corridors is palpable, as delegates dash between meetings and cluster in corners to carry on the discussions over the treaty text that they are now discussing in smaller working groups. The working groups themselves are just getting underway and negotiators have taken up the task of sorting through the text that has been accumulated in a year of intercessional meetings, trying to compromise on the more contentious issues before high-level ministers take over the discussions in the middle of next week. Just this morning, we saw country parties vigorously debating what the legal framework of a final, legally binding agreement would look like. And to top it off, U.S. Special Envoy for Climate Change Todd Stern (head of U.S. delegation Jonathan Pershing’s boss) arrived in Cancun today, and according to one delegate is already engaged in bilateral meetings.

The surge in activity at the negotiation venue, the Moon Palace, is being matched on the U.S. side by a flurry of events in the nearby NGO venue, the Cancunmesse. The U.S. delegation is hosting a series of events describing efforts at home to curb carbon emissions, advance climate science and fund adaptation projects domestically and around the world, in an effort to provide transparency on U.S. actions and (one suspects) to bolster the U.S. negotiating position at the talks.

Pershing made a special appearance yesterday at one of these events, along with Beth Urbanas from the Treasury Department and Bill Breed and Maura O’Neill from USAID, to describe U.S. efforts to disburse its share of the $30 billion in “fast start finance” that developed countries agreed in Copenhagen to raise by 2012 for mitigation and adaptation projects and programs in developing countries. In fiscal year 2010, the United States contributed $1.7 billion, consisting of $400 million of development finance and export credit and $1.3 in Congressionally appropriated assistance. The officials described a number of multi and bilateral projects, from investments in Indonesia to help reduce deforestation to an Energy and Climate Partnership of the Americas to address the problem of tropical glacier retreat.

The officials painted a rosy picture, but in fact mobilizing a significant amount of funding for a potential climate green fund in the future will prove to be a significant challenge (this of course assumes that negotiators here will even be able to agree on the architecture for such a fund, an issue that’s still uncertain). It’s worth noting that even $1.7 billion sounds big but isn’t exactly a shining example of American largess, considering that the UK, a significantly smaller country, has already pledged 1.5 billion pounds in fast start finance. The majority of any climate funding will have to go through the Congressional budget appropriations process, whereby each year Congress makes significant changes to, and eventually approves, the President’s proposed budget for the next year.

This automatically introduces a level of uncertainty into the negotiations, since the United States cannot in good faith commit to a certain level of funding over the long-term without knowing whether it will b approved by Congress. In my work at FCNL, we closely monitor the Congressional appropriations process, and every year passage of the segment that includes funding for foreign assistance in particular is carefully scrutinized and often brutally slashed. The November mid-term elections hinted ominously that things will only get worse for the foreign aid budget, as Republicans picked up several seats in the House and Senate, all the while vowing to cut Federal spending.

The first wave of the assault against climate finance recently began, as 350.org reports that four Republican Senators recently sent a letter to Secretary of State Clinton calling for an end to overseas climate aid. Americans are badly informed about how much the U.S. actually spends on ODA: according to GOOD Politics blog, the average American believes that the U.S. spends 21 times what we currently spend on foreign aid. With such misinformation widespread, the assault on climate finance will only continue, as politicians continue to score political points with budget-conscious constituents by threatening to slash the foreign assistance budget. This will make it more and more difficult for the United States to build confidence in the other parties of the UNFCCC that it can actually follow through on its commitments and act decisively on climate change. This also has the dangerous side effect of eroding U.S. credibility internationally and giving our opponents ammunition by demonstrating that the United States cannot follow through on its international commitments or negotiate in good faith at the UN.

Sadly, in all of the debate over the brackets, commas and slashes in the negotiating text, it is easy for negotiators to lose sight of those who are in desperate need of this finance: the poorest and most vulnerable people in the world. From pastoralists groups in Kenya who rely on vegetation and water for their herd’s survival and therefore their livelihoods, entire communities in Pakistan that were killed and displaced by massive floods this summer, the devastating impacts of climate change demand that we push harder for a positive Cancun outcome.

Tags: climate change, COP16, fast start finance, featured, Jonathan Pershing, Todd Stern, UNFCCC, United States, USA