Climate Policy & Finance

COP 23 was one COP in two zones: The Bula zone was the site of the official negotiations  - with little relevance to what happens in the real world. The Bonn zone hosted dozens of civil society kiosks and hundreds of events searching for real solutions.

A comprehensive list of all projects approved at each GCF board meeting, including CSO commentary.

What does a normative framing and a push for the gender-responsiveness of climate finance mean for the global climate finance architecture and the Green Climate Fund? A set of four new information briefs as part of an annual update of the Climate Finance Fundamentals (CFF) briefing series explores this relationship.

The Green Climate Fund is important for implementing the Paris Agreement and for setting important standards for global climate finance. The financial viability of the fund, however, is by no means guaranteed. 

With states, cities, and citizens willing to double down and move ahead with climate commitments, the global community can still count on many Americans’ willingness to act responsibly in support of global climate actions, even if their White House is not. Unfortunately, such activism will not make up for the failure of the Trump administration to make good on its international climate finance obligation.

With severe climate impacts for the most vulnerable countries on the rise, adaptation is no longer sufficient. Significant loss and damage must be accounted for. This discussion paper looks at how financing for loss and damage should be governed and what institutions, approaches and methodologies are necessary.

At the UN’s COP 22 climate conference in Marrakech, the international community closed ranks despite (or perhaps because of?) the election of Donald Trump as the next U.S. president.

Marrakech was never going to write history on loss and damage in the same way that Paris did in 2015. Whilst the progress made in the Paris Agreement was tangible at Marrakech, rich countries didn’t allow a real breakthrough yet. The Marrakech talks did, however, lay some groundwork for future progress.

These graphics highlight the ten most noteworthy insights from joint effort by the Heinrich Böll Stiftung North America and the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) over the past year from monitoring climate finance on Climate Funds Update (CFU).

At the UN climate summit in Morocco from November 7 - 18 (COP 22), the global climate community aims to breathe life into the Paris Agreement. However, the real discussion about the most contentious points, including finance and what to do with loss & damage, begins only now in earnest.