Workshop: Climate change finance – ensuring accountability and effectiveness

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Climate change is arguably the key public policy dilemma facing the world today and one of the most important and urgent development issues of our time. Corruption exacerbates the effects and costs of climate change and thereby hampers our ability to combat it. The anti-corruption and environmental movements must work together to ensure that climate change strategies are efficient and effective, and not subject to misuse.

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the World Bank estimate that the international community will need to generate between US$170-$765 billion annually to address climate change. Although there is increasing agreement about the amount of finance required, there is still no consensus on how this money will be collected, distributed, and monitored. As these investments begin to flow, special attention must be paid to the growing risk of corruption. Investments may be diverted, misdirected, over or under-estimated due to corruption, weak governance and inappropriate management.

Given the commitments being made towards financing for climate change at the global level there is a need to establish methods for delivering this finance from the international community. It is also important to reflect on experience at the country level, to identify gaps in the current knowledge and to ensure that countries’ views and perspectives reach decision makers at the international level. Finally, the role of national and sub-national institutions in the management and oversight of climate change finance must also be considered if the system is to function efficiently and effectively.

This workshop will tackle the issues of how to integrate the corruption and climate change agendas to ensure effective, transparent and accountable financing for climate change. It will look specifically at:

• How climate change resources and investments should be collected, distributed and monitored at the international level; and subsequently
• How international sources of public finance can be channelled through country level mechanism in ways that minimise potential corruption
• How institutions at the national and sub-national level should be involved in decision making and oversight of climate finance arrangements.

Coordinator: Thomas Beloe and Robert Onus, UNDP Asia Pacific Regional Centre
Moderator: Martin Krause, UNDP Asia Pacific Regional Centre

Panelists:

Luis Gomez-Echeverri, Global Energy Assessment – The UNFCCC, CIF and other sources of bilateral / multilateral climate change finance: the implication of international climate change financing architecture for country level climate change financing arrangements

Trusha Reddy, Institute of Security Studies, South Africa – Monitoring the Governance of Climate Finance in Africa

Professor Richard Klein, Stockholm Environment Institute – Integrating climate change financing into national development planning and financing – how might this be done?

Fakrul Ahsan, Division Chief, General Economics Division, Planning Commission, Bangladesh – Integrating climate change finance into national budgets or designing discrete financing mechanisms – what are the options at the country level?

Professor Charles Sampford, Director, IEGL, The Institute for Ethics, Governance and Law – Using national institutions to combat corruption in climate change finance – what are the options?’

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