It’s Getting Hot In Here

This morning at the Subsidiary Body for Implementation’s (SBI) contact group meeting on the adaptation fund, the draft text was accepted by the room! This document sets forward the principles and modalities of the fund, and suggests the future track for approving a final fund so that developing countries can begin accessing the resources they need to adapt to the impacts of climate change. Yesterday’s hectic schedule of cancellations and impromptu informal consultations culminated in a small group of stakeholders drafting the final language for the document. Observers are not allowed to enter these discussion, so I had to wait pensively for the verdict this morning in the contact group.

The co-chairs were joined by the Chair of SBI and the three of them implored the group to accept the text so that the fund might move forward. After a lengthy explanation of the previous evening’s process, the co-chair introduced two new paragraphs that cover the ability of institutions to submit their recommendations on how they would operationalize the fund. These two paragraphs would be removed if any party disagreed, as they were added after the rest of the text had been agreed to by the drafting group. The Chairman of SBI, Thomas Becker from Denmark, opened the floor for either a “yes” or “no” answer to the paragraphs. Gambia buzzed in and said, “Mr. Chair,” and then there was a pause, “we believe that it should be 2007….”

At first, no one got it, but then a chuckling wave went around the room: in the text it stated that the Conference of the Parties serving as the Meeting of the Parties (COP/MOP) “invites interested institutions to submit to the secretariat, by 23 February 2006 ….” Everyone was relieved that the only comment was about a typo….

This text is a compromise, but does include some items worth highlighting. First of all, the adaptation fund will be under the “authority and guidance” of the COP/MOP, meaning that parties will have the control, not a third party institution. Projects will also be “country[-]driven” and will take into account sustainable development and poverty. Along with using national communications, this will allow developing countries to have more control over the process, a key aspect of context-dependent adaptation projects. The governing board of the fund will contain only members from parties to the Kyoto Protocol, and will have a majority of members from developing countries. Along with these main aspects, the fund will be managed transparently, equitably, and with mechanisms to ensure quality and monitoring.

The items left to be defined by SBI 27 (at next year’s COP/MOP) are the criteria for eligibility, priority areas, Monetizing the share of proceeds, and institutional arrangements. These areas are the real meat of the fund and will prove to be more contentious than this initial definition of the modalities and principles. The Global Environment Facility (GEF) will be especially controversial as a possible institutional manager of the fund. Defining who gets what, for what reasons, and when will also be an energetic discussion, but I hope that these guidelines will serve as a good framework for having those discussions, and will allow developing countries, particularly, Small Island Developing States (SIDS) and Least Developed Countries (LDCs) to receive the resources owed them by the developed world to assist with the transition to a changing climate.