191 countries. Wildly differing priorities. Scientific uncertainty. Limited budgets. Short timescales. It’s no wonder that reaching agreements at international climate negotiations is difficult.

But depressingly, making agreements is actually the easy bit: keeping to them can be much, much harder.

Take this week’s report by the Institute for European Environmental Policy (IEEP), a research organisation based in London and Brussels. It strongly criticises the EU and its member states for failing to keep promises they made back in 2001.

The report centres on the Bonn Agreement, a joint declaration made by the then-members of the EU and a handful of other countries. The Agreement was an undertaking by those countries to provide USD410million per year of climate change funding for developing countries. According to the IEEP, the understanding was that this would be proportional to the CO₂ emissions of the each of the parties, leaving the EU countries with a USD361million annual commitment between them.

It was agreed that money could flow through a number of different channels, including a number of funds administered through the UN’s Global Environmental Facility (GEF). Trying to describe the funds quickly turns into something resembling the results of a food-fight with alphabetti spaghetti – before you know it you’re wallowing in SCCFs or KPAFs and LDCFs. Anyone keen to learn more is encouraged to read the IEEP’s report.*

While the details are complicated, the IEEP’s conclusions are simple. The EU’s USD361million annual contribution was supposed to be in place by 2005. But the report’s authors found that

• There is little transparency on behalf of the signatories on how much they have actually contributed;
• The limited information that is available suggests that the EU is delivering less than the annual amount it pledged each year under the Agreement.

The IEEP concludes that the lack of transparency over its compliance with the Bonn Agreement is ‘clearly inconsistent with the EU’s claim to global leadership in the climate change process’.

Coming as it does along with criticism from the WWF the previous week, this report may hint that EU’s (perceived) obligations to the developing world will be an area of political pressure as it approaches the Copenhagen negotiations in December.  And despite all the complexities of funding mechanisms and development aid mechanisms, the EU will also need to find a convincing way to demonstrate that it really is putting money where its mouth is.

*For those who love acronyms but don’t want to read the report – the SCCF, KPAF and LDCFs are just funds for LDC actions agreed at the UNFCCC COP6bis and COP7 which are administered by the GEF. KPAF is funded by a CER levy. See? Simple.

Pastoralists in Eritrea (credit: undp.org)

Yesterday the GEF (Global Environment Facility) held a side event at Poznan on “Financing Adaptation for the Poor”. This included presentations from Eritrea and Samoa on how they were using money from the LDCF (Least Developed Countries Fund). For disambiguation between all the different adaptation funds, click here. In short, the LDCF and SCCF are managed by the GEF, whereas the more often discussed UNFCCC “Adaptation Fund” is managed by a special board – more on that in another post.

The LDCF is important because it helps LDCs (Least Developed Countries), which often have very low administrative and financial capacity, to prepare their NAPAs. A very poor country like Eritrea might not know where to start in planning how to write plan on how to adapt, if it were not for these extra funds and technical assistance.

As Yvo de Boer noted, “Financial support is important to LDCs and small island states as they need more funding for national adaptation plans of actions to help their populations in adapting to the adverse effects of climate change,” and he also emphasised the role of extra funds for LDCs to help them with their reporting.

One project in Eritrea funded by the LDCF is testing options for more climate resilient livestock management systems, which is important given the land erosion Eritrea is suffering. Grazing lands have become smaller and smaller in recent years, and this is predicted to get worse.

As with most of these funds, money is scarce compared to needs. Donors have so far contributed about $175m to the LDCF but this is hardly enough to meet the needs of all LDCs. Furthermore, it is even way off the $800m target.

NGOs like Oxfam and Friends of the Earth have been lobbying for increased funds for LDCs in general, mostly focussing on the Adaptation Fund. Let’s hope that the LDCF is not forgotten in all of this. If countries don’t have comprehensive plans of action (i.e. decent NAPAs), then much of the financing they eventually receive to spend on adapting may be wasted…