Economic affairs secretary challenges OECD report

The Paris conference and negotiators on climate change will need to worry about the credibility of the new report by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development claiming significant progress in climate finance, a report by the department of economic affairs said.

“We are very far from the goal of $100 billion in climate change finance flows annually by 2020. This OECD report needs improvement. The credibility gap is too big,” said the discussion paper that analysed the accuracy, methodology and verifiability of the numbers as reported by the OECD.

Shaktikanta Das, secretary, department of economic affairs, said in the foreword of the report that it was important to establish more credible, accurate, and verifiable numbers on the true size of the mobilisation of climate change finance commitments and flows from developed to developing countries. “The OECD report appears to have overstated progress,” he said.

Das pitched for “genuine provision” of climate change finance instead of trying for “clever accounting” and said India had called for a roadmap for $100 billion a year in climate change financing by 2020, during the recent World Bank-IMF meetings in Lima, Peru.

Highlighting the importance of climate finance, the report said, “A road map to raise climate change finance is urgent and a must in Paris. Climate justice, for poorer countries and future generations, needs no less.”

The report said that so far the only credible number is the $2.2 billion in gross climate fund disbursements from 17 special climate change finance multilateral, bilateral and MDB funds created for the specific purpose and contrasted it with the $57 billion average for 2013-14 as reported by the OECD.

The OECD recently released a report ‘Climate Finance in 2013-14 and the USD100 billion goal’ had reported that developed countries and their private sector had provided some $62bn in climate finance flows in 2014, up from $52bn in 2013, and an average of $57bn annually over the 2013-14 period.

DAS PITCHED FOR ‘GENUINE PROVISION’ OF CLIMATE CHANGE FINANCE INSTEAD OF TRYING FOR ‘CLEVER ACCOUNTING’