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Environmental Research Digest – May 2012

Summary

The Open Climate Network (OCN) is an independent, international partnership that tracks and reports on the progress of key countries on climate change. OCN analysis is prepared by partners around the world covering climate finance, mitigation policy, and clean technology.

Key Findings

• The U.S. FSF contribution of $5.1B reflects a positive effort made in challenging political and economic circumstances, but there is more to be done.
• The US does not count private finance toward its FSF contribution, but it does count non-grant instruments as well as development assistance.
• While the FSF contribution reflects some new ef¬fort to address climate change, it is unclear that the contribution as a whole can be considered “new and additional.”
• The United States has made significant efforts over the past several years to improve monitoring and reporting on climate finance, as well as on foreign assistance.
• However there is a need for additional transparency and harmonization in reporting.
• The authors recommend that the United States:
• publish the criteria it uses to program and identify FSF;
• publish a detailed list of the projects and programs that constitute FSF, including, for each project, the amount, the administering agency, the financial instrument, the recipient country (where relevant) and institution, whether it is supported by core or non-core climate finance, and, to the extent feasible, information on disbursement status;
• identify and explain any discrepancies between such a project list and the total reported FSF sum, and ex¬plain how non-grant instruments are counted;
• provide complete information on U.S. FSF in a single document, so that users can avoid the need to down¬load and reconcile over 240 documents to access this information;
• harmonize reporting between the FSF reports and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Devel-opment (OECD) Development Assistance Committee (DAC) by ensuring that relevant FSF projects are tagged with the appropriate DAC Rio Markers and using consis¬tent project titles between the two reporting systems;
• work in cooperation with other contributor countries and multilateral institutions to strengthen and harmonize bilateral and multilateral reporting on climate finance.
• The UK has made a substantial effort to mobilise climate finance.
• Finance has been channelled through the Environmental Transformation Fund in 2010/11 and through the International Climate Fund (ICF) in 2011/12.
• GBP 1.06 billion had been spent and committed as of November 2011.
• It has also committed climate finance beyond the FSF period through the International Climate Fund (ICF), which will spend GBP 2.9 billion between April 2011 and March 2015.
• The majority of UK finance is spent by multilateral institutions, in the form of capital contributions.
• The UK does not count private finance toward its FSF contribution, but it does count non-grant instruments as well as development assistance.
• While the FSF contribution reflects some new effort to address climate change, it is unclear that the contribution as a whole can be considered “new and additional.”
• The UK is relatively transparent about its FSF spend, but more can be done.

Author(s)

Open Climate Network

Source

Further details

Tags: clean technology, climate change, climate finance, mitigation policy, OCN, Open Climate Network, UK, US