* Any views expressed in this opinion piece are those of the author and not of Thomson Reuters Foundation.
Heat is on for rich countries to spell out how they will mobilise $100 billion a year for poorer nations by 2020
How many times must rich governments be told they need to map out a pathway to boosting international climate finance to $100 billion per year by 2020 before they actually get out their calculators and do it?
It has become a bit of a mantra, repeated in recent months by top officials, from German Chancellor Angela Merkel to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and Christiana Figueres, head of the U.N. climate change secretariat.
And yet we are no closer, even after the Group of Seven leaders met in Germany last month – a gathering that was a missed opportunity to put some flesh on the bones before December's key U.N. climate conference, at which governments are due to agree a new global deal to tackle climate change.
Governments promised to mobilise this $100 billion back at climate talks Copenhagen in 2009. Now there's little chance of success in Paris unless wealthy governments get more specific about how the funding will be raised, many experts say.
It's increasingly clear the cash won't all be taxpayers' money. Some of it will come from the private sector and possibly innovative sources of finance such as carbon taxes or levies on financial trading or on the airline and shipping industries.
Earlier this week, at a high-level U.N. General Assembly event on climate change, Ban Ki-moon got a little more demanding.
After saying the U.N. negotiations were moving at a "snail's pace", he strongly urged developed countries to provide "a politically credible trajectory" for mobilising $100 billion per year by 2020 to support poorer nations in curbing emissions and strengthening their climate resilience.
It is "imperative" developed countries give greater clarity on the public finance component of the $100 billion before Paris, as well as on how they will engage private finance, he added.
SUMS DON’T ADD UP
Why did he speak out? Because when it comes to climate finance, 2 plus 2 rarely seems to equal 4.
It is difficult to work out the gap between current levels of funding and the $100 billion goal when there are differing views on the sums.
Aid group Oxfam said this week it estimates that less than $20 billion per year in public finance dedicated to climate action is flowing to developing countries, with only between $2.5 billion and $4.5 billion of this going to efforts to adapt to more extreme weather and rising seas. That leaves a gap of over $80 billion.
Earlier this year, both the World Bank and Germany's Merkel said the gap was a bit smaller, around $70 billion.
A U.N. committee has said annual climate finance flows from developed to developing countries are between $40 billion and $175 billion, but “may be closer to the lower bound”.
Oxfam also estimates that countries in sub-Saharan Africa are collectively spending around $5 billion (£3.2 billion) annually from their own budgets to adapt to climate change - far more than they receive from international sources of climate finance.
It says a roadmap to the $100 billion must substantially boost support for adaptation to climate impacts – not just cutting emissions.
And a recent report from a commission set up by the French government recommended defining a minimum target for public finance for adaptation in 2020 and beyond, dedicated to the least developed countries, small island developing states and Africa.
China said yesterday, in its national offer of climate action for the new U.N. deal, that the scale of financing should increase yearly starting from the $100 billion in 2020 - "which shall primarily come from public finance".
GCF LIMBERS UP
It certainly seems that if the money is there, proposals for how to use it will come. All eyes are on the fledgling Green Climate Fund (GCF), set up under the U.N. climate negotiations and now cranking into gear.
It has pledges of just over $10 billion so far, and is hoping to approve its first set of projects in November. At the U.N. event on Monday, Héla Cheikhrouhou, the GCF's executive director, said the total amount of funding requested has exceeded $6 billion already.
But of the 120 projects and programmes reviewed so far, only a portion - seeking a combined total of around $500 million - "look promising", Cheikhrouhou said.
"I would note that project ideas and concept notes received vary greatly in their level of advancement and quality. They require significant work to reach qualified funding requests," she added.
Meanwhile there is widespread agreement that the GCF needs more money, as China urged this week.
Cheikhrouhou called for a commitment in Paris to ensure that GCF funding continues to grow annually at levels significantly beyond its initial resources.
On Wednesday, French President Francois Hollande told an international summit on climate and territories - meaning subnational and local governments - that finance would play a key role in securing a new global climate change agreement. It’s a message he has sent before.
Now the question is, will it be acted on? In the run-up to Paris, there's little doubt the pressure is on rich nations to start turning words into dollars fast.
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
