Rich nations faulted on climate change funding

Developed countries are far from being transparent about the climate-change finance they promised to developing nations at the Copenhagen summit in 2009, according to a scorecard published on September 19, 2011 by the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED).

The scorecard’s authors urge international negotiators who will be gathering for talks under the UN Framework on Climate Change in Panama from October 1 to 7, 2011 to set up an independent registry of climate finance that includes project-level information.

The Malawian delegation at the meeting will be led by Natural Resources, Energy and the Environment minister Dr. Goodall Gondwe.

Norway ranked top on the scorecard – but with a score of only 52% — while New Zealand came last with just 26%. The generally low scores mask progress in some areas show that countries are not consistent in being transparent about all aspects of their funding.

According to an IIED press release, the scorecard’s authors say the overall lack of transparency hinders efforts to monitor where the money goes and ensure it is spent responsibly. It also means recipient countries may struggle to plan their responses to climate change.

The scorecard assesses how transparent countries have been in the delivery of US$30 billion of ‘new and additional’ funds, which they agreed to provide to developing countries, including Malawi, between 2010 and 2012.

To evaluate the transparency of these reports, David Ciplet and J. Timmons Roberts at Brown University in the United States, Martin Stadelmann at the Center for Comparative and International Studies, ETH and University of Zurich and Saleemul Huq and Achala Chandani at IIED created a scorecard based on 25 criteria in three groups—is the summary information adequate and clear; are the methods for measuring and allocating climate finance clearly defined; and are data presented for individual projects?

Countries varied greatly across these three groups of criteria. For instance, Australia scored 73% for summary information, but 17% for its baseline information and 0% for its project data.

“A transparent system for reporting on climate finance is essential to make sure that funds are adequate, predictable and used responsibly,” says Ciplet adding that greater transparency shall be critical to building trust in the international negotiations towards a global agreement on how to tackle climate change.

The scorecard’s authors call for a comprehensive registry of funds, with a standard format for donor countries to use when reporting on the climate finance they have disbursed.

They say, among others, the registry must provide accessible and comprehensive national reporting including an assessment of whether or not funding is new and additional; provide detailed project data that allow civil society to verify that funds are delivered and used responsibly; and delineate public funds from private and carbon market funds, adaptation funding from other types of funding, and grants from loans.

“Transparency is as important for taxpayers in the North as it is for climate-vulnerable countries in the South.

“Transparent reporting is essential to enable recipient countries to plan their responses to climate change and for civil society to hold governments to account on their promises,” says Dr Saleemul Huq, senior fellow in the climate change group at IIED.

Malawi is one of the many countries facing unpredictable weather patterns as one major effect of climate change.  According to Climate Change Scientist in the Department of Metrology and Climate Change in Blantyre, Elina Kululanga, Malawi is one of the greatest emitters of carbon dioxide through deforestation.

"Unsustainable land use through charcoal burning, shifting cultivation, and unnecessary bushfires deplete much of the forests that could be used as a carbon sink storage facility. She observes that cleared forests release carbon dioxide stored in woody biomass hence contributing to global emissions.

"Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas with potential to interfere with the climate systems thereby causing unpredictable weather patterns," says the scientist.

Nyasa Times 19 Sep, 2011

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Source: http://www.nyasatimes.com/blog/2011/09/19/rich-nations-faulted-on-climate-change-funding/
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