LONDON (AlertNet) - Government leaders, ministers and advisers gathered in London on Wednesday for the first meeting of a panel set up by the U.N. Secretary-General to mobilise $100 billion per year in fresh funding by 2020 to help developing nations address climate change.
The High-level Advisory Group on Climate Change Financing, co-chaired by British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, has been tasked with creating practical proposals to raise funds for poor countries' strategies to curb greenhouse emissions, shift to low-carbon development and adapt to climate change.
The group of 19 experts includes Norway's prime minister, Guyana's president, U.S. President Barack Obama's economic policy adviser Lawrence Summers, top British academic Nicholas Stern and financier George Soros, as well as officials from India, China, Brazil, Mexico and South Africa.
Stern described the London gathering as "the most significant climate meeting since Copenhagen," referring to December's U.N. climate talks which resulted in the Copenhagen Accord on fighting global warming but failed to produce a new, legally binding treaty.
More than 110 countries have now signed up to the accord, which commits wealthy nations to providing $30 billion for tackling climate change in developing countries by 2012, and $100 billion a year by 2020 in public and private funding, including "alternative sources of finance."
Ban Ki-Moon's advisory group is expected to issue "initial outputs" before a two-week U.N. climate negotiating session starting at the end of May, and to submit a final report by November, which will feed into the major U.N. talks in Cancun, Mexico, beginning at the end of that month.
A senior British government official said Wednesday's meeting aimed to fix a work plan identifying which sources of climate finance the panel will look at, the methodologies to be used and the analysis it will commission.
"The idea here is to get things on the table and examine their feasibility, how much they could raise, their equity and so on," the official told reporters.
INNOVATIVE FUNDING SOURCES
At a conference earlier this month, Stern said the panel would look at fresh sources of income including carbon taxes, revenues from auctioning emissions allowances, taxes on financial transactions, aviation and shipping, and the use of government assets held with the International Monetary Fund to raise money in the bond markets.
He added that innovative methods like these offer an easier route to mobilising large sums of money than relying on traditional aid from donors "at times when rich countries through their own incompetence have got into very difficult financial and economic crisis, thereby putting great pressure on their public finances".
The advisory group is expected to meet several times in the coming months. The British official said it is not clear whether the panel will make strong recommendations to the United Nations on how best to raise the money, or whether it will merely lay out the options for U.N. member countries to chew over.
Oxfam's campaigns and policy director, Phil Bloomer, said: "(Gordon Brown) must push the group towards making clear recommendations in time for Mexico so that the most effective ways to generate funds are developed to help the millions of people urgently needing support."
The international relief and development charity urged the panel to focus on raising funds from public sources other than national budgets, including taxes or levies on carbon and polluting activities.
"Public finance is crucial as important projects like building sea walls, reservoirs and infrastructure are unlikely to be attractive to private investors," Oxfam said in a statement.
Saleemul Huq, head of climate change research at the International Institute for Environment and Development who works closely with poor countries, said the least developed nations want the advisory group to explore earmarking revenues from a proposed levy on international air passengers to fund adaptation activities.
"The concern from the vulnerable developing countries is to have clarity as to what funding goes to adaptation in the vulnerable countries," said Huq. "That seems to get lost when people talk about climate finance."
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