Climate finance: Crucial for COP 22

  Climate Finance: Crucial for COP 22 By Houmi Ahamed-Mikidache   Paris Agreement  «  I want that the question of the implementation of finance will be fixed before the opening of  COP 22.» Not easy.  But this is what the French Minister, Ségolène Royal  said  last week, during the press conference on the enter into force of the Paris agreement. The Paris agreement will enter into force the 4 of November.  At least 55 countries representing at least 55% of global emissions have ratified it. “The reason we were able to pass the required threshold so early is that many of the largest emitters in the world – including the United States, China, India, the EU and a number of its member states – recognized the need to continue the momentum from Paris and joined swiftly to bring this Agreement into force as quickly as possible,”  Secretary of State John Kerry said in a press release published a week ago. Challenges But there are still several issues to achieve the 1,5° required by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change by 2100.   The national pledges are far beyond  the 1,5° required, reaching currently 3°, and the climate finance  is still an enigma for many experts.  The Paris Agreement specifies that there is  a commitment to review national pledges every five years. For the climate finance,  it is a different story. Many climate finance mechanisms exist but are unreachable  in Africa according to experts. In 2009, during the Conference of the Parties in Copenhaguen, a 100 billion US Dollars fund has been announced to help developing countries fighting against climate change by 2020. This fact was emphasized in the Paris Agreement. One of the sources of this climate finance is the UN Green Climate fund. With $10.3 billion,  there is a long way to go for funding this UN Fund, observers note. But for the French Ministry of Environment, they will be “a big push for funding it”. The Green Climate  Fund(GCF) “The GCF has made great progress by raising a US$10 billion budget – a really positive sign. But the challenge now is to use this to approve the game-changing programmes that will really transform economies. Our message to the board is more speed and less haste, advised the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) recently in a Q and A.” .For  the chief economist IIED, Paul Steele, the process of accreditation should change. The Board Member of the Green Climate Fund should choose ministries of local government rather than multilateral agencies.  “It will better target the most needed people,”   Steele noted. To him, the Green Climate Fund board...