Romain Weikmans

Assessing the credibility of how climate adaptation aid projects are categorised

ABSTRACT This article presents the findings of a re-evaluation of all 5,200 aid projects that OECD donors reported for 2012 as “climate change adaptation”-related, based on the “Rio marker” classification system. The findings confirm those from the academic and grey literature that the absence of independent quality control makes the adaptation Rio marker data almost entirely unreliable. This lack of credibility impedes meaningful assessments of progress toward the mainstreaming of adaptation in development cooperation activities. It also erodes trust in international climate negotiations, given that these data are frequently used in the financial reporting of developed countries to the UNFCCC.

How Will We Pay for Loss and Damage

Abstract The devotion of a full article in the Paris Agreement to loss and damage was a major breakthrough for the world’s most vulnerable nations seeing to gain support for climate impacts beyond what can be adapted to. But how will loss and damage be paid for, and who will pay it? Will ethics be part of this decision? Here we ask what are the possible means of raising predictable and adequate levels of funding to address loss and damage? Utilizing a framework developed by Marco Grasso (2009, 2010), we argue that making the ethical connections between addressing climate impacts and finance mechanisms could significantly enhance their likelihood of being adopted. We briefly review insurance mechanisms and catastrophe bonds, and then move on to six “innovative finance” approaches to funding loss and damage. We utilize six criteria in assessing them: adequacy, predictability, technical feasibility, fairness, and indirect effects, and whether each has a clear link to loss and damage. Several mechanisms for gathering funds emerged as most promising. Three of the six financial mechanisms we reviewed to raise funding involved airline transport: clearly, there is a huge opportunity to tax this sector in one form or another, in recognition of airline emissions’ role in creating losses and damages in vulnerable nations from sea level rise, droughts, floods or hurricanes. Funding loss and damage response is a contentious issue that will get only more unwieldy if Parties’ conceptions of loss and damage are at odds: a common definition of loss and damage needs to be agreed upon under the UNFCCC. Most immediately, to meet any equity criteria, wealthy countries should do more to support the premiums of those who cannot afford insurance.

The international climate finance accounting muddle: is there hope on the horizon?

The sources and governance of climate finance have been widely debated since the 2009 climate change summit in Copenhagen, when rich countries promised to provide US

The Transformative Capability of Transparency in Global Environmental Governance

30 billion in additional climate finance by 2012 and to mobilize US

Financing loss and damage: reviewing options under the Warsaw International Mechanism

100 billion a year by 2020 to address the mitigation and adaptation needs of developing countries. Have developed countries respected their financial commitments? Which countries have been the main beneficiaries of international climate money? As simple as these questions may seem, answers to them have proved to be highly controversial and have contributed to a continuous erosion of trust between Parties in international climate negotiations. This article explores the controversies around international climate finance figures. It examines how the lack of internationally agreed modalities to account for climate finance has given rise to a plethora of accounting and reporting practices that leads to widely contrasting statements on climate finance. We show that, despite some gaps, the Paris Agreement’s “enhanced transparency framework” could lead to marked improvements in the way climate finance is accounted and reported.

Postface: fragmentation, failing trust and enduring tensions over what counts as climate finance

We develop and apply a new theoretical framework for assessing the transformative capability of transparency in environmental governance. Our framework suggests that as norms related to transparency are recognized and translated into accountability mechanisms, and as these mechanisms are complied with, effects cascade and substantially influence the ability of transparency to transform relationships of inequality. Utilizing the case of climate finance in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, we find that while a variety of norms underpinning transparency are recognized within the governance architecture, their translation into accountability mechanisms has been weak, and information disclosed by countries is often opaque. This suggests that a focus on enhanced transparency is unlikely to be sufficient for realizing a climate regime that is adequate and equitable. Moreover, transparency should be seen as a terrain of political conflict over the conditions of inequality, employed differently by various coalitions to benefit their respective interests.

Fit for purpose: Negotiating the new climate finance accounting systems

ABSTRACT After decades of pressure from vulnerable developing countries, the Warsaw International Mechanism on Loss and Damage (the WIM) was established at the nineteenth Conference of the Parties (COP 19) in 2013 to address costly damages from climate change. However, little progress has been made towards establishing a mechanism to fund loss and damage. The WIMs Executive Committee issued its first two-year workplan the following year at COP 20 which offered, among other things, a range of approaches to financing loss and damage programmes, which we review here. We provide brief overviews of each mechanism proposed by the WIM ExCom, describe their current applications, their statuses under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), some of their advantages and disadvantages, and their current or potential application to loss and damage. We find that several of these mechanisms may be useful in supporting loss and damage programmes, but identify some key gaps. First, most of the mechanisms identified by the WIM ExCom are insurance schemes subsidized with voluntary contributions, which may not be adequate or reliable over time. Second, none were devised to apply to slow-onset events, or to non-economic losses and damages. That is, if harms are inflicted on parts of a society or its ecosystems that have no price, or if they occur gradually, they would probably not be covered by these mechanisms. Finally, the lack of a dedicated and adequate flow of finance to address the real loss and damage being experienced by vulnerable nations will require the use of innovative financial tools beyond those mentioned in the WIM ExCom workplan. Key policy insights Despite a full article of the 2015 Paris Agreement devoted to loss and damage, there is little international agreement on the scope of loss and damage programmes, and especially how they would be funded and by whom. Most of the loss and damage funding mechanisms identified by the WIM ExCom are insurance schemes subsidized with voluntary contributions, which may burden the most vulnerable countries and may not be reliable over time. None of the mechanisms were devised to apply to slow-onset events, or to non-economic losses and damages.