Climate Governance Integrity

24TH GREEN CLIMATE FUND BOARD MEETING: PROJECTS, POLICIES, ENTITIES APPROVALS This article is a summary of projects and other relevant items approved by the Green Climate Fund (GCF) Board members during its 24th board meeting held in Songdo on November 12-14, 2019. THE CHINA AND PALESTINE PROJECTS China project The China proposal for the project ‘Catalyzing climate finance (Shandong Green Development Fund)’ for a loan of USD 100 million from GCF was submitted by the Asian Development Bank (ADB). The project is expected to blend government finance, concessional donor finance, and private finance to catalyze and leverage investment. In China, among all other provinces, the Shandong province has the highest energy consumption that is managed by traditional sources such as coal resulting in the province that has the most carbon-intensive economy. Nearby 75 percent of the sub-projects aims to support mitigation actions: renewable energy, energy efficiency, sustainable transport, and solid w...

GCF 22ND BOARD MEETING AGENDA ITEMS GREEN CLIMATE FUND 22ND BOARD MEETING VENUE: SONGDO, SOUTH KOREA DATE: 26-28 FEBRUARY 2019 GCF’s Readiness and Preparatory Support Programme (RPSP)      Green Climate Fund (GCF)’s Readiness and Preparatory Support Programme (RPSP) Objectives of the evaluation: To assess RPSP’s effectiveness; evaluate the objectives of country ownership; to review the approaches in the implementation To recommend gains in effectiveness, efficiency, country ownership and possibilities of sustainable impacts Background and comments on RPSP – RPSP was launched in 2014 as a strategic priority to enhance country ownership and funding access; -evaluation results: about one-quarter of eligible countries have not yet accessed RPSP grant support – the GCF should provide more tailored approaches and understand better the political, economic and social context of each country if it wants these countries to involve actively – three-quarters of eligible countries hav...

The Green Climate Fund's Integrity Policies & Investigations Transparency International (TI) and some of its regional Chapters have been following and monitoring the Green Climate Fund (GCF)'s activities and development since 2012. The global anti-corruption watchdog does not only monitor the GCF but also engages with the Fund through its activities, programs, and relevant units and personnel.  Mainly, TI focuses its role on the GCF's integrity, notably on anti-corruption policies, fiduciary standards, procurement, and other integrity-related matters. TI-Korea Chapter supports the TI movement's project on climate governance integrity by participating in the GCF's Board member meetings, among other relevant activities. This article aims to present the Fund's report on its integrity activities published by the Independent Integrity Unit (IIU) of this funding institution dedicated to tackling the climate change issues. IIU's Investigative Activities The IIU...

Paris Agreement CLIMATE CHANGE AND SOUTH KOREAN CLIMATE ACTIONS STATUS: FULFILLING THE NATION’S COMMITMENTS TO THE PARIS AGREEMENT   05 August 2019, Seoul This article presents an assessment of South Korea’s climate action commitments to reducing its GHG (greenhouse gas) emissions to help mitigate the rising global temperature. Most of the data obtained are based on the works done by expert climate actions organization called Climate Action Tracker (CAT). SOUTH KOREA AND OTHER COUNTRIES South Korea and other countries that adopted the Paris Agreement have agreed to keep the global warming below 2 degrees Centigrade and pursue to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Centigrade. As signatories to the Agreement, countries proposed their respective contributions as their ‘fair share’ which are described in their (Intended) Nationally Determine Contributions (INDC) to reduce emissions downward from 2020 to 2030. Climate Action Tracker assessed the Paris Agreement signatory countries (below). CA...

MADRID COP25 KEY OUTCOMES BRIEFS COP25 Convention, Madrid COP25 in Madrid, this year’s annual United Nations conference, set a record as the longest one. It was initially scheduled to conclude on Friday of its second week but concluded on Sunday after lunch. It has been estimated that nearly 27,000 delegates came to Madrid whose aim was to finalize the Paris Agreement’s “rule book” for carbon markets and other forms of international cooperation. One of the most contentious items was on “Article 6” of the Agreement. Negotiators were unable to reach a consensus in various areas to the disappointment of many delegates and observers throughout the world. The considerable gap between current progress in climate actions (and talks) and global goals to limit warming is being felt and experienced by many developing nations and island states. This huge gap and disconnect were highlighted through  protest march  and gatherings in public in Madrid during the COP25 events. The COP25 venue...

COP21 PARIS CLIMATE AGREEMENT Transparency International published this article to suggest some conditions that COP21 should take into consideration to call this international climate change meeting a successful gathering of climate experts. Here’s the introductory part of the article… “Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock, you probably know that Monday marked the start of the COP21: a potentially-historic UN summit to tackle climate change. For two weeks, world leaders and their teams of negotiators will flow in and out of a conference centre on the outskirts of Paris, France, to (hopefully) agree a (hopefully) legally-binding agreement among governments. NGOs, young people, experts and indigenous groups will be watching closely. The aim is to keep the world’s ever-growing carbon emissions under control. The result, it is hoped, will be that global temperatures do not raise beyond the catastrophic so-called “two-degree threshold”, above which the impacts of climate change would beco...

PARIS AGREEMENT TRANSPARENCY FRAMEWORK Spirit of Talanoa  PARTIES TO THE UNFCCC AGREED TO ESTABLISH GUIDELINES FOR COUNTRIES All Parties to the UNFCCC (UN Framework Convention on Climate Change have approved to design rules and procedures on how to fulfill each countries’ obligations under the Paris Agreement (2015). However, based on the experiences in the past couple of years since the agreement is put into force, it proves quite challenging as each country must learn and choose from highly technical options. Besides, each country is also aware of their respective political interests they are obliged to pursue. What is transparency framework? Transparency framework is one of the most crucial elements found in the Paris Agreement. It is important in the sense that it highlights or encourages countries to include concrete obligations in reviewing their mitigation activities. Dagnet, et al. (2017) mentioned that those obligations require countries to communicate successes, identify ...