This is good, of course, but not good enough. As we have learned over the past 50 years of experience with development cooperation, finance alone is not sufficient. Ensuring that funds are used as effectively as possible, and that they provide the best value for money, is essential for both providers and recipients.
So precisely what have we learned from decades of experience of development cooperation? What can we gather from the growing body of knowledge around "South-South cooperation" to inform how we take forward climate financing? A lot.
Of course, there are differences between climate change finance and development cooperation (or "aid"). Without a doubt, external finance for climate change is unique in terms of scale given the size and complexity of the challenge. Dealing with this will call for the transfer of an unprecedented volume of resources. The projected $100 billion per year, while intended to be from both private and public sources, comes near to matching the record level of annual "official development assistance" (ODA) flows: $129 billion in 2010.
But differences aside, the task of financing climate change action is ultimately about transferring large volumes of finance for specific development objectives across national boundaries -- something we have been doing since the Marshall Fund was established to help rebuild Europe after the Second World War. Read the full report here.
Source: Stephen P. Groff, Huffington Post.com.
