Copenhagen Accord « Climate Equity

Well, let’s start with the good news first: the European Union and its 27 member countries have been good to their word and delivered a summary report on fast-start-finance commitments in time for the COP 16 in Cancun.  It is to be EUR 2.2  billion in 2010. As such, the EU — and the member countries who have taken the exercise serious enough to provide specific individual project information – have to be commended, and I give them a B+ for effort and initiative.  It cannot be easy for the EU Commission to try to bring 27 rascally students, pardon, countries, to order and make them do their homework in time.

Other industrialized countries, such as Japan, the United States or Australia have likewise joined in a mad scramble pre-Cancun — maybe as part of the peer pressure the early EU commitment for such a report created — and offered their take on how they are contributing to fulfilling the collective political pledge  industrialized countries made a year ago in Copenhagen to come up with US$ 10 billion in “new and additional” fast start money for climate change action in developing countries for 2010, 2011 and 2012 respectively.

Alas, the execution of these reporting efforts is still insufficient.  I’ll give the EU effort, the most comprehensive of the FSF reporting by industrialized countries, a C – at present, but hold out hope for, and encourage,  improvement, both short-term (for the next report) and long-term (in the way climate funding is delivered).

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The German conservative-liberal coalition government of Chancellor Angela Merkel (who in an earlier incarnation was portraying herself as international climate policy champion) has apparently decided that in the face of budgetary shortfalls and fiscal consolidation its international climate finance commitments can be considered nill and void.  This seems the only explanation for the cabinet’s recent decision to appropriate in its draft budget for 2011 and its projection for 2012 under the budget lines “Climate Protection Measures in Developing Countries” for the Development Cooperation and Environment Ministries only one dismal figure: ZERO.

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The good news first: going only by sheer numbers, the European Union is delivering on the fast start funding commitment it gave on behalf of its 27 member countries during the COP15 in Copenhagen as part of the Copenhagen Accord political final declaration. 

The bad news: it is far from certain whether that commitment represents “new and additional” money as promised in the Copenhagen Accord, or rather the ingenious creativity of the European block – very much wanting to be perceived publicly as the “good guys” on the question of delivering money to fund adaptation and mitigation actions in developing countries — in double-counting, recycling, overestimating or blatantly hiding the real figures, as some observers charge. 

During a side event at the Bonn climate talks on Thursday, the representatives of the Commission and several  EU countries delivered ten fast-paced presentations, choke-full of numbers which aimed at knocking out the air – and the many doubts – from the listeners in an already pretty airless overcrowded meeting room.  This was a more detailed presentation than the information gathered from an EU document leaked two weeks ago, which had left observers of fast track climate financing underwhelmed.

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