Civil society observers of the United Nations’ Green Climate Fund noted with alarm that like other international financial institutions, the GCF may rationalise funding climate-polluting projects because of “lower carbon” energy or because they switch to “lower emissions” fuels rather than truly sustainable options.
More than 250 organisations, movements and communities from developing countries have called on the UN to ban the use of its funds for fossil fuel and other harmful energy projects and programmes as its seventh board meeting begins in Songdo, Republic of Korea today. The meeting will continue until May 21. The preparatory meetings of the Board and informal consultations among registered observers were held yesterday.
Formally launched in 2010, the GCF is under pressure to open for business in 2015.
The 19th session of the Conference of Parties (COP) finalised the structure and functions of the GCF in Warsaw, Poland last year. But there had been no money in the Fund which would support projects and other activities in developing nations to adapt with the adverse impact of climate change and promote renewable energy. After 2020, the developed countries are pledge-bound to release $100bn every year.
“To use climate funds to finance fossil fuel and other harmful energy projects is totally unacceptable,” said Lidy Nacpil, coordinator of Jubilee South Asia/Pacific Movement on Debt and Development – a member of the Global Campaign to Demand Climate Justice that helped coordinate worldwide response.
“We are organisations, movements and communities from developing countries whose citizens bear the brunt of the most harmful consequences of climate change. All efforts must be made to ensure that climate finance is provided adequately, allocated equitably and used effectively,” Nacpil said, according to a press release.
“For the Green Climate Fund to have transformational impact, as it says it wants, it should not promote ‘business-as-usual’ energy solutions. It has to step away from the failed corporate model of energy services and open up real, people-controlled, community power solutions,” Nacpil concluded.
“Financing any fossil fuels and harmful energy through the Green Climate Fund is fundamentally in conflict with what people around the world over are demanding, what the mandate of the founding document of Green Climate Fund actually says, and with climate science and common sense,” Asad Rehman, head of International Climate at Friends of the Earth EWNI, said.
In the context of sustainable development, the Fund will promote the paradigm shift towards low-emission and climate-resilient development pathways by providing support to developing countries to limit or reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and to adapt to the impacts of climate change, taking into account the needs of those developing countries particularly vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change.
