Better terms for developing countries will be pushed by the Philippines after its appointment last Friday to group that will finalize a global climate change fund.
The Green Climate Fund (GCF), which aims to finance efforts to adapt to climate change and reduce carbon emissions, will be designed by a panel composed of 15 developed and 25 developing countries representing the 193 members of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
The UN Climate Secretariat picked the committee members from a pool of nominees during last week’s UNFCCC Conference of the Parties session in Bangkok.
“The Philippines is one among the seven Asian countries chosen to become part of the GCF transitional committee last Friday, which includes Singapore, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, South Korea, China, and India,” Naderev M. Sano, climate change commissioner and head of the Philippine delegation, yesterday told BusinessWorld.
“Our nominee [to represent the country in the panel] is Bernaditas de Castro Muller, our chief negotiator for finance and consultant to the Climate Change Commission,” he added.
The Philippines, said Mr. Sano, wants ensure to that adequate funds are available and easily accessible to the 130 developing countries in the UNFCC.
“Based on studies, developing countries need $100 billion a year to enable their governments in pursuing programs on climate change,” he said.
“If GCF went below this figure, it’s possible that less developing countries will benefit from this program,” he continued, noting that the Philippines was often excluded from previous climate change grants because it was neither a least developed country or a small island state.
“While we do not contest these strict standards for other grants, the GCF cannot operate in the same way because middle income countries like the Philippines are also vulnerable to the effects of climate change,” Mr. Sano said.
The country, along with other developing representatives, will also lobby for the exclusion of multilateral agencies such as the World Bank (WB) from the management of the GCF.
“We do not want the funds to be coursed through other agencies — namely, the World Bank — to eliminate transaction and administrative costs,” Mr. Sano declared, explaining that the WB would only become a trustee.
“Most of all, we also want the funds to be awarded as grants, not loans, to encourage developing countries to commit to carbon emission reduction,” he stressed.
There are also plans to make GCF beneficiaries accountable to the entire UNFCCC instead of a special committee tasked to assess the effectiveness of fund use.
The GCF’s preliminary design will be approved in a UNFCCC meeting in Durban, South Africa from November 28 to December 9. A governing board of 25 representatives will subsequently be formed to oversee the fund.
