Friday, July 13, 2012

African Development Bank delegation takes part in first workshop on long-term finance on climate change

AllAfrica.com via the African Development Bank: The first workshop on long-term finance related to climate change in a series initiated at the COP 17 conference in Durban in 2011 took place in Bonn, Germany, from 9 to 11 July 2012.

The establishment of a work programme including workshops, on long-term finance in 2012 was one of the decisions taken in Durban. The aim of this work programme is to contribute to the on-going efforts to scale up the mobilization of climate change finance after 2012. The work programme analyses options for the mobilization of resources from a wide variety of sources, inclu ding public and private, bilateral and multilateral and alternative sources.

Relevant analytical work on climate-related financing needs of developing countries is also being conducted under this work programme. The analysis draws upon relevant reports including that of the High-level Advisory Group on Climate Financing, whose membership included the president of the African Development Bank Group president, Donald Kaberuka, as well as the report on mobilizing climate finance for the Group of Twenty, which included AfDB staff among the contributors. These reports provide the criteria for assessing the various sources of finance as well as the lessons learned from the experience of fast-start finance to date. The work programme will host two workshops on long-term finance during the course of the year.

The Bonn workshop brought together senior representatives from Parties, financial institutions, private sector executives, civil society and academia. Professor Jeffrey Sachs, from the Earth Institute, Columbia University, gave the keynote speech on the economics of climate change.

His speech highlighted the need for as assessment rule on an individual country basis, based on carbon emissions (polluter pays principle) and ability to pay. His concluding remarks portrayed the emerging Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as the potential stimulus for local to national planning, as climate change mitigation and adaptation programs are highly context specific, requiring detailed costed plans from local to national levels....

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