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A review of contested perspectives on climate change finance.

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Date

2016-09-12

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Publisher

University of KwaZulu-Natal.

Abstract

There is an overwhelming consensus that climate change is a reality that requires urgent attention through mitigation and adaptation strategies. A slow rise in aggregate funding and investment towards projects which incorporate adaptation with respect to the consequences of climate change or mitigation of the known causes of climate change has occurred globally. This illustrates the increased intention of the public and private sectors to find appropriate interventions which work towards the lowering of carbon emissions or finding ways for the public to adapt their current behaviour to the eminent changes of climate. In this report, we present a critical review of literature on climate change financing. The review engages the meaning, sources and monitoring of the flow of climate finance. We also present discourses on issues related to the evaluation of the social impacts of climate finance on intended beneficiaries. These debates are contextualised in eThekwini Municipality’s approach to climate change adaption and mitigation. We note that there are many concerns regarding climate change finance that require further attention. These issues range from whether or not climate finance should form part of official development assistance (ODA), how funds should be distributed and who should climate change initiatives benefit. These issues could hamper the implementation of many useful strategies and much needed finance could end up funding projects that are not for public benefit. Furthermore, there is a conspicuous absence of appropriate and standard criteria for projects to meet in order to qualify as a climate change initiative. The lack of explicit requirements for projects to provide co-benefits to communities remains an unsettling problem and allows for substantial room for funding of unsuitable and in some cases, non-existent climate change projects. Much work still needs to be done to setup the identification criteria and measurement frameworks to help with issues of transparency, accountability and tracking of climate finance. This is especially needed in developing countries in order to curtail the misuse of climate funds in all tiers of government. There is also an urgent need to create a system that will govern, prescribe and monitor the use of climate funds for the betterment of the eco-systems, non –human species and humans.

Description

This work is based on the research supported by the South African Research Chairs Initiative of the Department of Science and Technology and National Research Foundation (DST/NRF) of South Africa (Grant No 71220). The work was also produced with the assistance of the Programme to Support Pro-Poor Policy Development (PSPPD Phase II) a partnership between the Presidency, the Republic of South Africa and the European Union under the project addressing the poverty and inequality challenge, grant for climate change adaptation and poverty reduction co-benefits: human capabilities toward green micro-enterprise. The contents of this work are the sole responsibility of the authors and can in no way be taken to reflect neither the views of the European Union nor the National Research Foundation.

Keywords

Climate change., Development studies., Climate change -- eThekwini Municipality -- Durban.

Citation

Lombo, M., Ntombela, S., Okem, A. E., & Bracking, S. (2016). A review of contested perspectives on climate change finance. SARChI Research Report #5. DST/NRF SARChI in Applied Poverty Reduction Assessment: University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban.

DOI