Australia rejoining Green Climate Fund after 4 year absence

Green Climate Fund at COP22

This morning the Foreign Affairs Minister Senator Penny Wong announced that Australia would be rejoining the Green Climate Fund and make a modest contribution.

The Green Climate Fund is the main vehicle for global climate finance and a key part of the Paris Agreement.

Australia is the only developed country not part of and contributing to this multilateral climate finance fund.

The Fund is presently going through a second round replenishment process with a high level pledging conference taking place in Bonn on 5 October.

Stakeout: António Guterres, UN Secretary-General and Sameh Shoukry, COP27 President demand negotiators step up

Sameh Shoukry, COP27 President and the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres targeted comments at negotiators, although they did not identify the blockers in negotiations. 

According to Sameh Shoukry, the items of contention are "The Mitigation Work Program (MWP) is yet to reach the desired outcome, Adaptation is still held back by procedural matters, ambitious outcomes on finance have not yet materialised. And on Loss and Damage Parties are shying away from taking the difficult political decisions."

Add to this the cover decision of COP has yet to include any ambition, such as the request by India to change the phasedown of coal statement from COP26 to being a Phaseout of all Fossil Fuels.

Watch them both trying to shame the negotiators in stepping up, compromise to deliver climate ambition especially on Loss and Damage Finance at this COP.

See also Side-event at the bottom of this post: Practical Action, NYU, Germanwatch, UCS: To many the climate negotiations appear to be stuck, how do we unlock progress on Loss and Damage?

Australia a laggard on climate finance. Will it promise more at COP27, support a Loss and damage facility?

According to a recent Carbon Brief analysis, Australia gave just 38% of its fair share climate finance and fell short by US$1.7bn. Other assessments have been equally critical.

In Falling Short: Australia's role in funding fairer climate action in a Warming World - by Action Aid, Oxfam Australia and other NGOs on Australia's climate finance, found that Australia’s international climate funding is currently just a tenth of our international fair share. 

Australia’s fair share of international commitments is AUD$4 billion per year; however, our average contributions sit at only AUD$400 million per year over the period 2020-2025 says the report. 

If Australia wants to support our Pacific neigbours and host the UN Climate Conference COP31 in 2026, climate finance is an area it needs to step up.

Australian climate finance falling far short of our fair share, getting worse

A new report highlights the shortfall in developed countries climate finance, including noting Australia as a particular laggard. It estimates the Australian Government is contributing about 8 per cent of what our global fair share commitment should be for the years 2020-2025.

Antonio Guterres, the UN Secretary General, has warned developed nations they must deliver on climate finance for a successful outcome from the UN Climate Conference in Glagow (COP26) in November. 

The UN Secretary General, speaking at High-Level Dialogue on Climate Action in the Americas, hosted by the Government of Argentina , said developed nations must deliver on the solidarity agenda. He told the Dialogue: 

“developed nations must deliver on the solidarity agenda. That means support to developing countries on vaccines, debt and liquidity, as well as climate finance. We need a credible plan for delivering on the $ 100 billion dollar commitment made over a decade ago. We need it well ahead of Glasgow, to restore trust.” he said.

In 2009 at the UN Climate Change Conference (COP15) in Copenhagen Australia committed with other developed nations to raising US $100 billion climate finance per year from 2020 to developing countries to assist the transition and global decarbonistion.

Of the 23 developed countries responsible for providing international climate finance, only Germany, Norway and Sweden have been paying their fair share of the annual $100 billion goal. All other countries are falling short.

Australia, Canada, Greece, New Zealand, Portugal and the United States (US) all contributed less than 20% of their fair share of international climate finance. 

Australia has committed AU$1.5 billion (US$1.1 billion) for climate finance for 2021–2025, which means it will be funding only 8 per cent of its fair share over the next five years, according to the study.

The OECD and Oxfam International in recent media releases have also highlighted this shortfall in climate finance commitment, one of the pillars behind the Paris Agreement. (see updates below)

Update: Australian NGOs published the Fairer Futures: Financing Global Climate Solutions report 20 October 2021. This report called for the Scaling up Australia’s contributions to global climate finance in three stages to 2030: including Immediately double Australia’s current climate finance to $3 billion over 2020-2025; by 2023, shape regional and global climate responses by committing an additional $700 – $990 million to the Green Climate Fund; by 2030, scale up Australia’s climate finance to meet its fair share of $12 billion annually.

Two Fossils Awards: Developed Countries for lack of Loss and Damage climate finance, and Austria for facilitating coal subsidies

Some unusual suspects today. While everyone was looking at SBSTA discussion on to 'note' or 'welcome' the IPCC special report on 1.5C, these bad boys snuck in and whisked away the Fossil of the Day awards.

The first Award went to the developed countries of the Executive Committee (Excomm) of the Warsaw International Mechanism (WIM) on Loss and Damage. Five years old and still not a penny of climate finance. How miserly the parents are.

But the Climate Action Network is gracious and sang them a Happy birthday message.

The second Fossil Award to Austria for subsidising coal. Yes, you heard me right, Austria, not Australia! Austria has the presidency of the European Council and wants to subsidize existing and new coal plants for the next 17 years through backdoor mechanisms. Really Austria, you know you can't compete with Australia when it comes to coal (Cough Cough).

Here be the award commendations for today: