by Charlene Watson (ODI) and Liane Schalatek (HBS) The Green Climate Fund now has approved more funding for climate change action in developing countries than any other multilateral climate fund. With the Board decisions taken at its 22nd Board Meeting at the end of February 2019, the Fund’s 102 projects, including the nine approved last…
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Rising public climate finance flows only tell part of the story
By Liane Schalatek Just in time for the international climate community coming together from December 3-14 for this year’s international climate summit, the COP24 in Katowice, Poland, two complementary sets of climate finance data and reports, one by the UNFCCC’s Standing Committee on Finance (SCF), the other by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development…
Millions being delivered for the water sector, but billions are needed
The recent Fiji/ Bonn COP grappled with the mobilisation of finance for country’s Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). These NDCs are a powerful framework for setting out national climate action priorities…
In Bonn and Beyond, Gender-Responsive Climate Finance Means More than Numbers
As the international climate community comes together from November 6-17 for this year’s climate summit, the COP23 in Bonn, a lot of attention will be focused on the fact that this is the first COP…
Climate Funds Update highlights: May 2017
The biggest news in the last few weeks has been the US’s withdrawal from the Paris Agreement. One impact of this withdrawal is uncertainty over the delivery of the remaining $2 billion from the US’s $3 billion pledge to the Green Climate Fund (GCF). In response, however, many US state governors, mayors, university presidents, and businesses have reaffirmed their commitment to climate action.
Climate Funds Update highlights: November 2016
The UNFCCC COP21 in Paris left high expectations for COP22 in Marrakesh to deliver a ‘concrete road map’ for mobilizing the $100 billion in climate finance for developing countries by 2020. The Climate Finance team at ODI has been analysing the latest trends in mobilising public international climate finance through the: Updates to the data…
Climate Funds Update highlights: May 2016
The Paris Agreement necessitates a gear change in progress on the ground In December 195 nations came together in Paris to secure an historic global climate agreement. The question of who should foot the bill for implementing the agreement was always at the core of the negotiations, and especially so for poorer countries with little historical…
Better data can help international forest finance flow
In this blog Marigold Norman of the Overseas Development Institute discusses what improved capacities for producing reliable data on forest cover mean for access to international REDD+ finance. http://www.odi.org/comment/9879-better-data-can-help-international-forest-finance-flow
What counts? Understanding where we stand on climate finance
Smita Nakhooda, Team Lead for Climate Finance at ODI, sheds clarity on the different ways of counting climate finance flows – with some pointers that could help policy-makers get to grips with this contentious issue…
Getting it together: institutional arrangements for coordination and stakeholder engagement in climate finance
Vyoma Jha, Centre for Policy Research (CPR) Countries around the world are establishing arrangements to direct public finance and international investment towards climate change mitigation or adaptation. CPR and ODI have been working with researchers in Colombia, India, Indonesia, the United Kingdom and Zambia to understand how these work. While the economic circumstances, and the policy framework for action on climate change…
Increasing the transparency of climate-related development finance flows: publishing detail on over 7,000 projects in 2013
Stephanie Ockenden, OECD Development Cooperation Directorate Climate change and development are intrinsically linked, and external development finance flows have a critical role to play in supporting this transition. Achieving an efficient and effective allocation of this finance will be critical to support our climate change goals and to ensure the most vulnerable are reached. Improved…
The coordination of climate finance in India
Vyoma Jha, Centre for Policy Research The Indian government recently announced the enhancement of solar energy targets under the National Solar Mission to 100 GW by 2019 as compared to the initial aim of 22 GW by 2022, targeting nearly US$100 billion in renewable energy investments over the next five years. It also established a…
Climate Finance Fundamentals 2014
Sam Barnard, ODI The UNFCCC COP20 kicked off this week in Peru. Day by day more negotiators and observers are arriving at ‘el Pentagonito’, the Peruvian army headquarters in Lima where this year’s conference is being held, in the hope of making progress towards the global climate agreement billed to be signed in Paris in November of…
The local-global link in adaptation financing
Alice Caravani attended the recent Community Based Adaptation Conference (CBA8) in Kathmandu, Nepal, organised by IIED. In this opinion piece for ODI she reflects on experiences with adaptation financing in Nepal, and steps that can be taken to better align the priorities and decisions of international donors with the needs of those on the ground. http://www.odi.org.uk/opinion/8375-local-global-link-adaptation-financing
More than meetings: the way forward on climate finance
Smita Nakhooda, ODI At the COP 19 in Warsaw, Christiana Figueres sent governments back home with a command: “Governments, and especially developed nations, must go back to do their homework so they can put their plans on the table ahead of the Paris conference”. What exactly does it mean? On finance, it means that developed…
Climate finance highlights since July 2013
Climate Funds Update data is now current as of October 2013. This brief note highlights new developments including pledges, approvals, and disbursements. New Climate Finance pledges July 2013 – November 2013: Pledges and deposits have been fairly static. The US has made the largest new deposits of USD 176 million to the Clean Technology Fund (CTF). The…
Climate Finance: A Few Fundamentals for 2013
Developed countries have provided finance to help developing countries respond to climate change through many different channels, including dedicated multilateral climate funds. The UNFCCC COP in Warsaw this week, it is hoped, will focus political attention on climate finance. A High-level Ministerial Dialogue, chaired by the Ugandan Minister of Finance and the Danish Minister of Climate Energy…
Who’s ready for climate finance?
Richard Calland (Africa Climate Finance Hub) and Smita Nakhooda (ODI) Is it a bird or is it a plane? The question of what ‘readiness’ for climate finance involves has attracted a great deal of attention and debate, particularly since the Green Climate Fund is supposed to channel $100 billion a year by 2020 for climate action and…
REDD+ finance: where next?
Marigold Norman, Forest Trends and Charlene Watson, ODI In bringing together the views of a number of initiatives tracking REDD+ finance, this series has highlighted why there isn’t a single aggregate figure for global REDD+ finance flowing. Despite this, we are increasingly able to assess where finance is coming from, how it flows through different channels…
REDD+ Finance: Private Lessons For The Public Sphere
Molly Peters-Stanley, Ecosystem Marketplace Kenya’s Kasigau Corridor Project that Reduces Deforestation and forest Degradation (“REDD”) protects 200,000 hectares of endangered forest between the Tsavo East and Tsavo West National Parks. The Surui Forest Carbon Project protects 32,000 hectares of endangered forest in the Brazilian Amazon. Cambodia’s Oddar Meanchey REDD+ Project protects 64,000 hectares of endangered…
REDD+ Finance: What do we know about the private sector contribution?
Iain Henderson & Jacinto Coello, UNEP FI There is broad consensus that private finance and investment are needed for REDD+ to meet its climate change mitigation potential in the medium to long-term. Those who are familiar with REDD+ will have heard countless variations of an equation that currently does not balance. Annual REDD+ additional investment…
REDD+ finance: Lessons from the US
Jeff Metcalfe, Tropical Forest Group The Tropical Forest Group has been tracking the REDD+ finance flowing from the U.S. in its U.S. REDD+ Finance Database (USRFD). This contains more than 800 data points for REDD or sustainable forestry reported by United States agencies with data transcribed from public documents. Although it is not linked to the US government, the…
REDD+ finance: What you see isn’t always what you get
Alice Harrison, Transparency International A colleague recently likened his experience tracking climate and REDD+ money in Mexico to an archaeological dig. Little by little, fragments of your object begin to reveal themselves, but not without a significant amount of time, resources and tenacity. At Transparency International (TI) we have been monitoring climate finance flows in…
REDD+ finance: who’s counting?
Charlene Watson, ODI and Marigold Norman, Forest Trends Finance for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation plus conservation (REDD+) activities has been flowing for at least five years now. But what can we really say about how much finance there has been, where it has come from, where it is going, and what it is being spent…
New update – June 2013
The Climate Funds Update data is now current as of June 2013. This brief note highlights new developments including pledges, approvals, and disbursements. New Climate Finance pledges March 2013 – May 2013: On 24th May 2013 Sweden’s government announced a new pledge to the Adaptation Fund of USD 15 million, making Sweden the biggest donor to the…
What was achieved during the Fast Start Finance period?
Developed countries agreed to deliver USD 30 billion in new and additional ‘fast-start finance’ (FSF) between 2010-2012 to developing countries, as a step towards mobilizing USD 100 billion per year from public and private sources by 2020. By the end of the FSF period, the self-reporting of developed country governments indicated that they had exceeded…
New update – March 2013
The Climate Funds Update data is now current as of March 2013. Since November 2012, countries have pledged and deposited money in a number of climate funds. The UK has pledged USD 147 million to the Clean Technology Fund and deposited USD 101 million. Sweden also made a new contribution to the Scaling-Up Renewable Energy Program for Low…
Increasing transparency in climate finance: what role for the UNFCCC NAMA Registry?
This piece was written by Charlene Watson of the Overseas Development Institute. Since 2007, parties to the UNFCCC have been discussing the design of a registry of Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions (NAMAs). This Registry would match developing country actions with possible sources of international financial support. Such a matching function may be difficult to realise, as funders…
Fast-Start Finance: where do we stand at the end of 2012?
This piece was co-authored by Smita Nakhooda of the Overseas Development Institute and Taryn Fransen of the World Resources Institute, with inputs from Noriko Shimizu (International Group for Environmental Strategies) and Sven Harmeling (Germanwatch). Developed countries self-report that they have delivered more than $33 billion in fast-start climate finance between 2010 and 2012, exceeding the pledges they made at…
Climate finance tracking 2.0
CFU is glad to feature this guest commentary on climate finance transparency from our colleague Maya Forstater, Climate Finance Advisor to Publish What You Fund. They say if you like sausages you should never visit a sausage factory. But users of Climate Funds Update’s data tools may be interested to read about the process involved. The…
New update – November 2012
We have now updated all fund and project data through 15th November 2012. For more information on our latest publications in preparation of the COP meetings in Doha click here. Please contact the Climate Funds Update team with any questions or for further information.
Climate Finance: A few more fundamentals
As Qatar prepares to host COP 18, decisions on how to deliver and channel finance to help developing countries respond to climate change will again be on the agenda. Climate finance is mobilized in the context of UNFCCC principles that recognize countries common but differentiated responsibilities to act to address climate change. Despite fiscal pressures,…
New update – September 2012
The Climate Funds Update data is now current as of September 2012. Highlights from this update include: $160 million has been pledged and deposited to the Global Climate Change Alliance (GCCA), since September 2011, an increase of nearly 70%. This increase comes mainly from EC budget and from the EC Fast Start Finance. The GCCA is…
Following the Money: An Update on The Status of Climate Finance
Following the first meeting of the board of the new global Green Climate Fund, and as UNFCCC parties meet in Bangkok to take stock of progress in implementing the Durban Platform, Climate Funds Update reflects on major developments in climate finance over the last six months. Nearly $1 billion has been pledged to dedicated climate funds The UK, United…
New update – August 2012
We have now updated all fund and project data through 30th June 2012. Feedback on our new data visualisation tools would be welcome. Please contact the Climate Funds Update team with any questions or for further information.
Long Term Climate Finance
Estimates of the costs of addressing climate change in developing countries vary substantially from $480 billion to $ 1.5 trillion per year. Understanding growing needs for finance to help developing countries address climate change was the first item on the agenda at the workshop on Long Term Finance hosted by the UNFCCC secretariat this week. How much money do we need? There…
The Green Climate Fund: Ready, set, go?
Smita Nakhooda (ODI) and Liane Schalatek (HBF) Climate finance was a hot topic at the UNFCCC COP in Durban, South Africa last year, and the adoption of the governing instrument of the Green Climate Fund (GCF) was a key outcome of the negotiations. This was a great relief: failure to reach agreement would have been read as…
The Fundamentals of Climate Finance
Smita Nakhooda introduces the updated Climate Finance Fundamentals publication series, released for the COP in Durban on Climate Funds Update. The series offers short, introductory briefings on various aspects of climate finance. As parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change gather in Durban this week, the issue of how to mobilise and channel the finance…