Climate Policy & Finance

More than 80 international civil society organizations and groups active in the global climate finance discourse, including the Heinrich Böll Stiftung, have jointly issued a set of recommendations to be taken account by the Transitional Committee, which is set to meet end of April for its first meeting to design the future Green Climate Fund.

Conditions for US climate and energy policy have considerably changed after comprehensive climate and energy legislation has failed in the 111th Congress. In the newly elected 112th Congress, emphasis will likely shift away from climate change to more orthodox supply side energy strategies.

This paper offers an early contribution to the debate by highlighting some of the more pressing design issues and describing the implications of these features.

Liane Schalatek says climate finance decisions utilising public funds are not made within a normative vacuum. Comprehensive legal frameworks related to environmental protection and universal human rights exist, which together with core democratic principles must be applied to the mobilisation, governance and disbursement of public climate finance

Last month, the Heinrich Boell Foundation and WRI convened a group of international experts to discuss policies and incentives for increasing the use of renewable energy in the developing world. WRI’s Davida Wood and Lutz Weischer discuss the key lessons learned at the workshop and their work on helping developing countries make the transition to renewable energy.

Harmony marked the end of the climate summit in Cancún in December. UN members affirmed that average temperatures on Earth must not rise by more than two degrees. They also decided to establish a new Green Climate Fund and called for a timely follow-up to the Kyoto Protocol, which will expire in 2012. In an interview with Hans Dembowski and Barbara Unmüssig assessed the results.

In this study, Jϋrgen Blazejczak and Dietmar Edler both from the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW Berlin) document the state of research on the economic consequences of a stringent climate protection policy.

Klimawandel ist nicht genderneutral und seine Auswirkungen sind längst eine bittere Realität für die ärmsten Menschen, darunter besonders häufig Frauen. Frauen sind dabei nicht nur Opfer des Klimawandels, sondern auch proaktive Akteurinnen, agents of change, mit einem bislang weitestgehend ignorierten Wissens- und Handlungspotential.