High Level Advisory Group on Climate Financing
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United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon established a High-Level Advisory Group on Climate Change Financing (AGF) on 12 February 2010 for the duration of ten months. The group's aim was to "study potential sources of revenue that will enable achievement of the level of climate change financing that was promised during the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December 2009."[1]
The group was co-chaired by Jens Stoltenberg, Prime Minister of Norway, Meles Zenawi, Prime Minister of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia. Guyana President Bharrat Jagdeo was the third head of state on the board, but was not a co-chair. Members included experts from developed countries, developing countries, and from international development organizations and the academic world. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown co-chaired with Zenawi from the group's formation in February 2010 to 6 June 2010, when he was replaced by Stoltenberg.[2]
The group's mandate was to develop practical proposals on how to significantly scale-up long-term financing for mitigation and adaptation strategies in developing countries from various public as well as private sources.
Report
The High-Level Advisory Group released its final report on 5 November 2010, just ahead of the 2010 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Cancun, Mexico. The report concluded that it is "challenging but feasible" to reach the goal of mobilizing US$100 billion annually for climate actions in developing countries by 2020.
The AGF Report examined various approaches, including existing and new public funding and increased private flows. Its definition of “public” finance includes “direct budget contributions” as one strand, with five others envisaging finance from carbon market auction revenues; revenue from international transport (shipping and airline taxes); carbon taxation; multilateral funds (most notably, IMF Special Drawing Rights); and an international financial transaction tax. Two work streams considering private finance will cover “using public finance to leverage private investment/finance” (including debt swaps and insurance schemes) and carbon markets (which includes CDM reform and sectoral proposals). In addition to the main report, they published eight different work streams paper, providing technical information and analysis for each finance source.
Although the AGF Report did not build a blueprint for implementing these sources, it does assess all sources based on eight criteria, which includes revenue, efficiency (carbon efficiency - the impact of a method on setting a price for carbon externality and overall efficiency - taking into account impacts on developed country growth and risks, equity (distribution of revenue), incidence (who really pays for the climate change mitigation and adaptation actions - should avoid payment by developing countries or inclusion of developing countries’ contribution in counting towards 100billion, practicality (feasibility before 2020), reliability, additionality to Official Development Assistance and acceptability (domestic political acceptability in both developed and developing countries).
Criticism
Critics claimed that the group could contribute to the downgrading of UNFCCC negotiations, as well as complaining of a lack of transparency and a significant gender bias.[3] Also, some civil society organizations do not agree that US 100 billion per year is sufficient for climate change financing, but overall, NGOs are content with the pressure on developed countries brought by the AGF report.[4]
