Progress report: building the Green Climate Fund
Day two of the Transitional Committee (TC) for the Design of the Green Climate Fund closed its first meeting with measured success on April 29th. After short delays and slow progress on day one, day two closed with members of the Committee establishing workstreams and a general working arrangement to deliver their mandate - designing the details of the new climate fund - to the Conference of Parties (COP) in Durban later this year.
The International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development has a great summary on the more technical outcomes of the meeting:
On day two, the TC managed to establish its general working arrangement and work plan. The officials established the “workstreams” by which the TC will divide its task: scope, guiding principles, and cross-cutting issues; governance and institutional arrangements; operational modalities; and monitoring and evaluation. These workstreams will be facilitated by representatives of Spain and Barbados, Switzerland and Democratic Republic of Congo, Australia and Pakistan, and Sweden and Bangladesh, respectively.
The consensus rule for decision-making was an issue that caused some debate among TC members. Some experts expressed the need for clarification on what is meant by “consensus,” reminding many of the awkward atmosphere in the air in the last hours of Cancun, while others asked for some flexibility on decision-making based on their current mandate.
The TC also discussed the nature and functions of the Technical Support Unit (TSU). The Secretariat confirmed that various regional development banks as well as international institutions have responded to the UNFCCC call to serve as members of this technical group. Some TC Members expressed concern about the need to establish clear rules in order to avoid conflict of interest in the TSU work.
The first meeting closed just days before Transparency International released a massive study calling for climate change measures to be made corruption proof - underscoring the important and challenging role of getting any new fund’s design right. Here’s a teaser from their website:
As governments prepare to spend up to US$100 billion annually by 2020 to limit climate change and prepare for its impact, Transparency International (TI) warns of the corruption risks of climate finance flowing through new, untested channels and recommends strengthening governance systems to tackle them.
If climate governance is not prepared for corruption, corruption will undermine climate governance. The [Global Corruption Report] does not just raise the alarm, it provides a risk map of ways to make climate change measures more effective.
The Committee also agreed to at least three additional substantive meetings before the COP, with Japan likely hosting the next substantive meeting in July. However, our next opportunity to hear more from the TC will come in June at the next round of UN climate negotiations in Bonn; the group will analyze the state-of-the-art of multilateral financing as part of two technical workshops to be held this year.
photo credit: creative commons via aresauburn




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http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/adoptanegotiator/~3/77eDObBAVNk/ Slow Movement on UN Green Climate Fund | adoptanegotiator.org
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http://sandbox.adoptanegotiator.org/2011/05/02/slow-movement-on-un-green-climate-fund/ Slow Movement on UN Green Climate Fund | The Climate Tracker Project
About the author
Joshua WieseJoshua Wiese is Adopt a Negotiator’s Project Director. He is based in San Francisco, where he spends most of his time thinking about how to use technology to make the world a better place.