France, UN: Climate finance must ramp up

OREANDA-NEWS. November 23, 2015. French president Francois Hollande met UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon yesterday to discuss ways to ensure an ambitious outcome of the Cop 21 climate change conference in Paris in December.

Talks on the deal will resume at the end of this month, with only 10 official negotiating days before the Paris meeting begins, and amid concerns that too many issues remain undecided.

The two leaders highlighted the importance of mobilising finance to the Green Climate Fund (GCF) as a way of speeding up negotiations and discussed finding new ways to engage heads of state and governments on the issue.

They highlighted the importance of generating signals about the climate finance package well before the Paris meeting, for example at a meeting of finance ministers in Lima in October.

Clear signals about climate finance — long a sticking point of negotiations — would make developing nations more likely to sign up to a Paris deal.

"[The leaders] agreed on the importance of operationalising the Green Climate Fund, and of reaching out to all member states to further accelerate momentum in the coming months," a joint statement said.

The GCF has received \\$5.47bn in signed funding from developed countries, with a further \\$4.63bn pledged but not yet signed. Converting pledges to contributions usually takes between eight and 12 months. The US is by far the largest pledger yet to contribute, with its \\$3bn pledge awaiting approval.

Developed countries have committed to expanding funding to reach at least \\$100bn/yr by 2020, a goal that was recently re-iterated by G7 leaders, and that is frequently cited by developing nations as a target that needs to be reached before they can sign up to a binding successor to the Kyoto protocol.