International climate finance: need for reforms to increase efficiency and effectiveness

The public hearing in the German Bundestag’s Committee on Economic Cooperation and Development on October 12 has discussed the instruments of climate risk insurance (Global Climate Risk Shield, proposed by the German government) and Loss and Damage Finance Facility proposed by developing countries in the UNFCCC negotiations. In order not to repeat the comprehensive interventions of experts on these two policy instruments I focus here on increasing overall effectiveness of international public climate finance in a context of global crises. Developing countries expect a significant increase of public international climate finance following the failure of developed countries to achieve the target of mobilising 100 billion $ by 2020 (only about 80 billion $ were mobilised, and even that number is contested due to reporting approaches differing widely between countries, with the robustness of information being limited). Demands for annual funding in the context of the new collective quantified goal for international climate finance after 2025 put on the table at COP26 in Glasgow range between 1 and 1.3 trillion $.