06 December 2011

This year marks a decade since the Least Developed Countries Fund (LDCF) was established at COP7 in Marrakesh to finance the most urgent adaptation needs of least developed countries. Unfortunately little is said about the LDCF and there is less to celebrate. Ten years on, only $415 million has been pledged towards a total $2 billion to prepare and implement adaptation programmes of action (NAPAs), the fund’s purpose.

Negotiators in Durban cannot reverse what has been a lost decade for adaptation finance. But they can and must secure an outcome in Durban that leads to reliable, sufficient and predictable flows of adaptation finance to developing countries in the decade ahead.

Apart from a few exceptions, we haven’t seen much evidence that climate finance won’t be falling off a cliff when fast start finance runs out at the end of 2013. The current nose-diving of the international carbon price also means that the Adaptation Fund, which takes a fixed share of 2% from CDM projects, is at risk of having barely any money next year.

With emissions levels surpassing the IPCC’s worst case scenarios, it’s clear that huge amounts of money will be needed to address impacts of both more frequent extreme weather events and slow onset events. Yet less than a quarter of US and a third of EU fast start finance is being spent on adaptation projects. Australia provides a better example, with over half of its climate finance dedicated to adaptation this year.

The most promising sources of climate finance include innovative sources such as a financial transaction tax and a global price on emissions from international shipping and aviation, which would not result in any cost to developing countries.

Negotiators can aim to land in a zone where clear guarantees can be given to developing countries that they will not be left ‘high and dry’ (or maybe that should be ‘hot, low and wet’) without any money to address the climate impacts that they have done nothing to cause. As all Parties have committed to setting up the Green Climate Fund in Durban, let’s make sure it is not an empty shell.

[excerpted from an article in ECO, CAN International's daily newsletter at COP-17]