Climate Finance and Principles for Effective Development Cooperation

Abstract

The notion of development effectiveness has been evolving over the past decade. At the same time, its implications for provider practices and development outcomes have been affected by a changing and more complex development finance landscape. Emerging cooperation modalities, such as South-South Development Cooperation (SSDC), global International NGOs (INGOs) or blended finance with the private sector, have become more prominent, deepening a debate on development effectiveness. Climate finance is now a growing and important dimension of this finance landscape. Developed country providers will be pressed to respond to the undeniable and urgent need for dramatically increased allocations of climate finance. But seemingly climate finance has yet to be analysed in relation to lessons from efforts to improve effective development cooperation. In putting forward a framework for assessing climate finance drawing on the principles for effective development cooperation, this chapter draws upon the third GPEDC’s 2018/2019 biannual monitoring process (3MR). The GPEDC monitors the implementation of the four principles against ten indicators for effective development cooperation. The chapter argues that building trust will require major new commitments on the part of providers to set ambitious climate targets for themselves, to scale up their international climate finance based on real need, including for loss and damages, and to strengthen its overall effectiveness for developing country partners. Providers must pay much greater attention to the needs, interests and priorities of the many vulnerable countries and populations that will bear the major impacts of climate change so far largely unchecked. Lesson from 15 years of discourse and country attention to conditions for effective development cooperation can provide a useful framework for sharpening this finance as a tool for inclusive and transformative change for millions of affected people.