4 December 2012: The African Climate Policy Centre (ACPC) has launched a report on climate financing, on the sidelines of the Doha Climate Change Conference, which notes that finance commitments made at the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference have not been met and calls on developed countries to provide a finance roadmap for 2013-2020 to demonstrate their intention to fulfil commitments.

Highlighting a number of key findings and lessons learnt from the “fast start finance” system, the report suggests that the financing roadmap should detail a scenario that shows the increase in financing over the period 2013-2020. It further calls for such a roadmap to: set out intermediate financing targets; and outline the share of public financing for increasing climate funds, as well as direct and indirect budget contributions to developing countries. It further notes that only 11% of current financing provided by the system can be considered “new and additional.” The report also cautions on the lack of transparency in addition to slow disbursement of funds, saying that if current practices do not change, future funding will remain at a low level.

The “fast start finance” system, which was agreed upon at the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference in 2009, aims to provide US$30 billion new and additional funding to developing countries. The ACPC is a center of the UN Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) and a part of the Climate for Development in Africa programme (ClimDev-Africa). [UNECA Press Release]