After preparing all semester, it’s finally time to pack my bags for Katowice. This Friday I’ll be heading to the UNFCCC’s COP24 as a part of Duke’s delegation. I can’t wait to experience the negotiations first hand, and witness history as the Paris Rulebook is hopefully completed—operationalizing the milestone agreement. I will be working with National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) to track public transparency, mitigation, Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) progress, and stock-take developments at the conference.

At the COP, I will be following the issue of climate financing closely. Significant and reliable funding is vital to addressing climate change. Without it, vulnerable countries will be unable to enact their NDCs. The Green Climate Fund (GCF) is essential to climate finance, as it is one of the operating entities of the UNFCCC’s financial mechanism. Its mission is to fund adaptation and mitigation, with developing countries receiving at least half of the adaptation funding. In the Initial Resource Mobilization (IRM) after GCF’s founding in 2010, developing countries pledged a total of $10.1 billion in funding and GCF has approved 76 projects so far.

Unfortunately, the GCF faces a “crisis of confidence,” according to a recent WRI report. The board is suffering critical governance issues and faces a lack of reliable funding. Because each country set their pledge without any transparency, there is no predictability of GCF’s future funding. Without an understanding of how each country reached its pledge number, there is nothing to hold them accountable in the future. Predictability of GCF funding is significant because it will allow recipient parties to more effectively implement and plan their NDCs and it will allow contributing countries to lay the domestic political groundwork necessary to secure GCF funding. The ability to attract funding from the private sector also requires the ability for the GCF to retain trust and confidence as a reliable partner.

The first replenishment negotiations have recently launched and the pledging conference will take place at the end of 2019. This is why this climate financing will be an important, but controversial, topic at this COP.

If a more transparent framework for determining contributions was set, at least for the first replenishment, this “crisis of confidence” could be averted. WRI has developed a formula that utilized a scaled indicative minimum threshold (scaled IMT) as a reference for the minimum commitment each country should submit for replenishment. It’s based on the share of gross national income averaged over the past six years, share of cumulative GHG emissions based on averaged 1850 and 1990 cumulative data, and a scaling factor of GHG emissions per capita. Countries would be called to commit at least the same amount as they did during the IRM and add whatever the scaled IMT indicates, plus any additional funding to demonstrate ambition. The formula indicates that the coming replenishment contribution total should rise to $13.1 billion. Below is a graph with WRI’s recommendations for replenishment contributions.

Source: Waslander, Jacob. “Green Climate Fund Contributions Calculator.” World Resources Institute, Sept. 2018, www.wri.org/resources/data-visualizations/green-climate-fund-contributions-calculator.

Hopefully WRI’s report will gain traction in negotiations and financing will be addressed more specifically in the Paris Rulebook. Albeit politically challenging, dialogue will move this issue forward.