Columbia International Affairs Online: Policy Briefs

CIAO DATE: 08/2010

Climate Finance Post-Copenhagen: The $100bn questions

May 2010

Oxfam Publishing

Abstract

Climate change is the single greatest threat to development – making the battle to overcome poverty ever harder and more expensive. Finance is urgently needed to help vulnerable communities adapt to a changing climate. At Copenhagen, there was progress on finance, if limited. The Copenhagen Accord proposed the establishment of a ‘Copenhagen Green Climate Fund’ and included a loose pledge from rich countries to ‘mobilise’ $100bn a year by 2020. The UN Secretary General has convened a High Level Advisory Group on Climate Financing (AGF) to recommend – ahead of the UN climate meeting in Mexico in December 2010 – how the money can be raised. Their interim report will be discussed at June’s UNFCCC meeting in Bonn – the first round of substantive negotiations since Copenhagen. In this note, Oxfam raises the key questions that the AGF needs to tackle to ensure sufficient and sustainable sources of finance for climate change mitigation and adaptation.