Both ENDS
October 10th the fifth board meeting of the Green Climate Fund took place, this time in Paris. The Green Climate Fund is an international fund set up and commissioned by the United Nations in order to help developing countries combatting the negative effects of climate change. Possibly, developing countries are granted with an amount of $100 billion a year! Although the financial support is very promising, opinions differ widely on how that money should be spent. Therefore Anouk Franck and Annelieke Duma of Both ENDS attended, along with Titi Soentoro of the Indonesian organization Aksi! and Jorge Daneri of M'Bigua from Argentina, to make sure that the money gets where it is most needed.
During the UNFCCC Climate Change Conference next week in Bonn, Both ENDS,Transparency International, Human Rights Watch and Carbon Market Watch will host the side event “Environmental and social accountability for results based finance - Lessons learned and ways forward’’. This event will discuss how lessons from International Financial Institutions can inform the design and operation of appropriate redress mechanisms for the Green Climate Fund and other private and public climate finance flows.
The impacts of climate change are largely mediated by water. Changes in precipitation and glacial melt patterns, variations in river flow, increased occurrence of droughts and floods, and sea level rise all impact both urban and rural communities in developed, emerging, and especially developing countries. The book:'Adaptation to Climate Change through Water Management: Capacity, Equity and Sustainability' presents evidence of the emerging wealth of knowledge and experience on adaptation to climate change from across the world. It identifies common barriers and bridges for local adaptation to climate change through water resources management, looking at adaptive capacity, equity, and sustainability.
Currently, the board members of the UN-backed Green Climate Fund (GCF) are meeting in Indonesia. It is the sixth board meeting since its establishment in 2011: the members, coming from 12 Western and 12 Southern countries, meet every three or four months to discuss what should be done with the huge sum of money (up to $ 100 billion a year!) that is going to be made available by the international community for climate projects in developing countries. Both ENDS, together with a group of delegates from various Southern organisations, has attended every board meeting so far.
To ensure that everyone on the planet will be protected against the impacts of climate change, a lot of money will have to be made available. By now, most scholars do agree on this. All this money (ultimately about $ 100 billion per year) will be put into one large fund: the Green Climate Fund. But what's going to happen with all that money and who will benefit from it?
