Lingering fears about diminished enthusiasm in COPs as developed countries renege on financial promises

Long after the dust has set­tled on the Doha Con­ference, the message put out by Dr. Emmanuel Dlamini, Chair of the African Group of Negotiators at the end of the parley remains relevant
“Developing countries want progress in climate talks. Those countries that keep stalling the talks are the ones whose leaders are not fulfill­ing their obligations for miti­gation and finance”, Dlamini, told a group of Non-Govern­mental Organizations at the conference.

“Equity is important in all aspects of climate talks, precisely because you can­not treat the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) especially those from Africa in the same way as you would treat the United States, countries of the European Union or Japan and Canada”, Dr. Dlamini lashed out in Doha.

The real fear, even among delegations of developed coun­tries, was that if African del­egations leave Qatar without a clear sign from developed countries that the latter indeed mean business, the faith that countries from the region have harboured in the entire nego­tiation process would be seri­ously damaged, according to experts.
Another challenge that keeps coming up at these conferences is always how to maintain unity within the African delegation.

When the new chair of the Conference of African Heads of State and Government on Climate Change (CA­HOSCC), Ethiopian Prime Minister, Mr. Hailemariam Desalegn addressed his peers at the conference, he echoed this need by calling on them to “join forces to encour­age Annex II Parties (devel­oped countries) to specify the amount of finance they intend to mobilize from the public sector for the Green Climate Fund (GCF) during each year from 2013 to 2019” “The problem”, according to the same experts, “is of course, how to have Annex 1 (devel­oped) countries honour their pledges; but it is not necessarily easier to have all African coun­tries accept to pile more pres­sure on the developed coun­tries.”

The Ethiopian Prime Minis­ter recalled that industrialized countries had agreed (at least in principle), to raise 100 billion USD per year by 2020 in order to help developing countries adapt meaningfully to climate change and mitigate its effects on Africa.

“They also pledged, as part of their collective commitment, to provide new and additional resources; to provide Fast-Start Finance to the tune of 30 bil­lion USD for the period 2010 – 2012”, he added.

However, a new ACPC re­port on the current provision of climate finance shows that only a small fraction (less than 11%), of currently provided climate finance meets the UN commitment of being “new and additional.”