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.
More than 20 NGOs co-signed a statement expressing their concern on the accreditation of Deutsche Bank as implementing partner of the Green Climate Fund. The signatories, including Both ENDS are disappointed about the lack of transparency of the accreditation.
In Argentina, the wetlands of the Paraná Delta are burning. The fires, caused by human activity and aggrevated by climate change, clearly show the wetlands need protection. The Argentinian organisations that form part of the Wetlands without Borders programme are therefore calling for a strong "Ley de Humedales", a Wetlands Law.
Both ENDS works with partners worldwide to amplify the voices of communities that are experiencing first-hand the devastating social and environmental impacts of unsustainable financial policies and practices – from climate change to pollution to forced displacement. For more than two decades, we have worked to draw attention to an obscure, yet hugely influential type of financial institution: export credit agencies (ECAs).
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.
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?