Tag: Climate finance

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…

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…

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…

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…

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,…

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…

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…