Operation Green Climate Fund

While making an intervention on the Green Climate Fund (GCF) Transnational Committee’s report, Ambassador Burhan Gafoor of Singapore targeted Saudi Arabia in a rather witty manner. His golden words were, “a camel is a horse made by a committee”, which garnered much laughter in the plenary. In response to this, Saudi reacted by saying that “Saudi horses and camels are strong” and that “they are not made by a committee but are God-given”. Although these statements made the mood at UN climate talks a bit entertaining, but the issues related finance nonetheless remained serious and largely unresolved.

In Cancun last year, parties agreed to create and operationalize a Green Climate Fund that would mobilize $100bn as long term finance for climate adaptation and mitigation. Earlier this year, a Transnational Committee was formed to finalize the work of the CGF and give its recommendations in terms of a report to the Conference of the Parties at its seventeenth session (which is COP17) for adoption. But during the preparatory talks in Cape Town, US and Saudi Arabia rejected the draft outright; leaving us with a bitter question to answer here at Durban – will a carefully designed Green Climate Fund emerge out of COP17?

Photo: Oxfam International

In the informal consultation meeting on finance on Wednesday, countries were basically seen arguing over the language in the draft text on finance and in Cancun Agreements. They couldn’t seem to agree on key issues such as the functional role of the Standing Committee on finance, alternative sources of funding, and decision over public and private forms of finance. United States and Japan did not agree over mobilizing funds from public sources. They were of the opinion that private sector need to be included in the mechanism. This got objection from many countries, including Pakistan, Philippines and Bolivia. G77 countries and other LDCs wanted funds to be mobilized from public sources since “you can’t make private firms pay for social welfare”.

The discussion got heated, and thus interested, on the innovative sources of long term finance. US and Japan had issues with that as well and argued that “countries should determine their own mode of financing”. Pakistan’s stance on finance was pretty interesting. It said that the international financial transaction levy, also known as the Robinhood tax, could become the major contributor to GCF and so should be given consideration at COP17. On the other hand, Bolivia recommended that assessed contribution by developed countries based on their GDP would be a more appropriate option.

Back in the plenary, co-chair Trevor Manuel from South Africa introduced the GCF report to the COP. This was when the parties expressed reservations about the report, which basically meant that they wanted to re-open the report. It was then decided by the COP presidency that the report would be reopened in the informal consultations.

So now that the report is on the verge to get reopened, it seems that getting the Green Climate Fund finalized and operational by March next year is rather difficult, if not impossible. What remains to be seen is how the COP presidency manages this issue. But before deciding on anything, parties must remember one thing – the Green Climate Fund should not be used as a bargaining tool since it was agreed in Cancun last year and so it should become operational as soon as possible.