Fast start finance

Private finance has a vital role to play in the global response to climate change, but it is not a substitute for public finance.

As the COP19 climate talks start, poor countries are being left with little idea about what money is available to help them cope with climate change because of murky accounting and a lack of transparency by rich countries.

After another year of extreme weather, developing countries face a looming climate ‘fiscal cliff’ at the end of 2012. Yet new Oxfam research finds most climate finance pledges so far have been recycled funds or loans.

At the ECOFIN meeting today, EU Finance Ministers have failed to provide a clear answer to what Europe will do to ensure climate finance does not fall off a cliff once Fast Start F

New sources of climate finance must be found to curb the alarming shift in Official Development Assistance (ODA) to climate finance and to protect the development gains of recent decades.

Today at the UN climate change talks in Durban the European Union as a bloc has reported that it has spent €2.34 billion during 2011 as ‘fast start finance’.  This is part of the EU’s €7.2 bil