Recent bilateral initiatives for climate financing: Are they moving in the right direction?
Date: 06/10/2008
Introduction: By Neil Bird and Leo Peskett, ODI, September 2008. Governments worldwide are debating how best to respond to the many challenges set by climate change. Within this debate there is growing recognition that national funding efforts need to be complemented by additional finance at the international level. Over the past year, a whole range of traditional donor countries have created new funds to support climate change programmes in developing countries. These include the governments of Australia, Germany, Japan, Spain and the UK, together with the European Union (Box 1), with pledges totalling $2.7 billion per year over the next few years. The impetus behind these new financial mechanisms has been, partly, a frustration with existing frameworks for technology trans¬fer and investment that are not sufficiently responsive to the global challenges of climate change. However, these initiatives raise some important questions about the underlying rela¬tionship between the North and South. Recent ODI research into these new funding mechanisms (see useful resources) has raised a number of issues that need addressing.
