Groups Slam Green Climate Fund Approval of Firms Tied to Dirty Energy

Civil society representatives attending the board meeting of the Green Climate Fund (GCF) in Songdo, South Korea expressed strong disappointment Thursday with the board’s decision to accredit Deutsche Bank – one of the world’s largest financiers of coal – to receive and distribute GCF funds.

The Fund is the United Nations’ premier mechanism for funding climate change-related mitigation and adaptation in developing countries.

At the Copenhagen climate summit in 2009, donors agreed to mobilize 100 billion dollars a year by 2020, in an undefined mix of public and private funding, to help developing countries. The GCF is to be a cornerstone of this mobilization, using the money to fund an even split between mitigation and adaptation projects.

But representatives of development, environment and social justice organisations say that while they support the Fund in principle, “it needs to change direction away from accrediting controversial big banks that are heavily invested in fossil fuels and thus actually exacerbating climate change.”

They say the Board chose to approve all 13 applicants presented for accreditation at the current GCF meeting in a single bloc, accrediting groups of entities in one go.  Besides Deutsche Bank, they included the World Bank, whose record is also controversial for its “top-down, donor-driven nature.”

Read more at Groups Slam Green Climate Fund Approval of Firms Tied to Dirty Energy