Copenhagen: Looking beyond the issue of global financing at the concrete advances already being made

Copenhagen: Looking beyond the issue of global financing at the concrete advances already being made

A few days before the start of the Copenhagen summit, predictions of a “failure of negotiations” headline are being made. Faced by the anxieties surrounding an event that have to meet to the challenges before us, let us rather look at the concrete advances on which decision-makers can already depend.  
 
At hot topic level, we have the funding of the fight against global warming. Whereas, in the North, it is presented as an “expense”, it is really about the investment required to find the means for common and sustainable development and growth. If the North must change its means of production in order to reduce its emissions and increase its efficiency, the South, for its part, must conceptualize a form of growth that also participates in a global attenuation effort. The South also faces another major challenge: its adaptation to the effects of climate disturbance. Rising sea levels, threats to agriculture, depletion of natural resources: Developing countries are already the hardest hit.  
 
However, the countries of the North and those of the South are not on a level playing field against these challenges: This is where funding becomes an international relations issue. For the financial needs of developing countries are considerable:  Europe, which was incidentally the first power to set itself ambitious targets, has assessed the annual requirement at 100 billion Euros by 2020 – about as much as Official Development Aid. At the same time, France is stressing that, for the African continent alone, 400 billion Euros must be mobilized in the next twenty years.
 
But the great debate over committed amounts must not obscure the apparently more technical one over how this funding is put into place. Since this involves re-orienting the whole world economy in a more sustainable direction, all political and financial actors must be involved, whether private or public; and all financial instruments must be used.
 
The real issue, therefore, is the creation of the international financial architecture the world needs to fight global warming. But, as often happens when confronted by a global challenge, the international community is tempted to create a new ad hoc financial structure. A global fund dedicated to climate would indeed meet the dual imperative of solidarity (reflecting global generosity to face what is indeed a common problem, but before which we are not all equal) and organization (setting the place where common standards will be produced). However, if the creation of such a fund is decided, pitfalls will have to be avoided. In particular, the surrender to “gigantism”, with a fund directed by a “Central Committee for Global Climate Policy” – an option that would leave very little room for flexibility and collaboration between financial actors and would create a new form of world domination by a few institutions or big States.
 
The risk is therefore that wrong solutions will be brought to a real problem. The quickest and most efficient responses to the fight against global warming lie not in ideology but in pragmatism. For there are concrete territorial realities behind the funding under discussion: national policies for energy production, energy efficiency, transport, urban planning, forestry development, etc. A multiplicity of local policies and projects thus converge toward global objectives.
 
There is therefore no lack of concrete solutions to the climate change challenge; and quite a number of countries in the South have already started to act. Thus the “climate plans” developed by Mexico, Indonesia or Kenya are tangible advances on the road toward those great objectives that will be given a financial amount in Copenhagen.
 
These initiatives will be accompanied and financed by existing financial institutions – multilateral and bilateral donors, regional development banks or United Nations organizations, ready to take over in the field after the negotiations. For several decades, these institutions have acquired a varied experience and practice, on which it is indispensable to rely to achieve rapid results. How many people know that the German KfW, the French AFD and the Japanese JICA represent 20% of global official development aid and 80% of bilateral aid over climate? How many people know that Europe has been able to create efficient co-financing mechanisms between the Commission, the European Investment Bank and Member States, thus enabling credible amounts of funding to be put on the table?
 
The size of the challenges to be faced and the massive amount of funding that has to be made plead in favor of the general mobilization of all territorial, economic and funding actors, particularly the private sector, which has an indispensable role to play. The international community could effectively exploit the added-value of each of these actors.
 
Beyond the actual figures, the negotiators in Copenhagen would therefore be wise to focus on the cooperation and implementation mechanisms required for this funding. By favoring both a systematic and pragmatic approach and by capitalizing on the know-how and pilot projects of all kinds, they could usefully allay fears and make a success out of Copenhagen, something few people are expecting.  
 
Jean-Michel Debrat is Assistant Director General of the French Development Agency (AFD)