The Green Climate Fund (GCF) is the world’s largest dedicated fund for climate action. By the end of this year it will have distributed all USD 10.2 billion of its initial resource mobilisation to over 102 projects in 97 countries, and we hope have raised twice as much again in its first formal replenishment. It is vital that the GCF’s efforts to increase finance for climate change are successful.
Therefore it is essential that the GCF considers new, or ‘innovative’, sources of finance to help developing countries reduce their emissions, adapt to climate impacts, and to address the loss and damage when climate impacts go beyond adaptation capabilities. These new sources of finance must be genuinely new – not simply a replacement for commitments from rich countries, and it is essential that they not increase the debt burden on vulnerable countries.
We suggest that the GCF put in place a work plan to properly address truly new sources of finance beginning in 2020 that includes: establishing guiding principles, such as polluter pays and equity and fairness, and that new sources of finance should not increase indebtedness of vulnerable countries; exploring potential new sources of finance, with an emphasis on the taxation options included in this report, and identifying how much finance each could raise and for what purpose; credible plans of action for how to implement the most promising new sources detailing the steps that would need to be taken; and, identifying any additional architecture that would need to be put in place.
Authors: Julie-Anne Richards, with Inputs from Sven Harmeling, Jean Paul Brice Affana, David Eckstein
