Adapting the international development finance infrastructure to climate change mitigation.

The failure of the Copenhagen summit, followed by the limited success achieved at Cancun with the establishment of the Green Climate Fund has raised key questions regarding the processes needed to finance and combine climate change and development objectives. International organizations need need to do more than just add climate as another priority area for the existing development infrastructure to address. Climate Change support is not about aid, with donors and recipients. It is about taking joint responsibility for a global problem, based on common but differentiated responsibilities. This article analyzes the necessary adaptation of the existing international aid and finance infrastructure to face climate change mitigation objectives. If existing IFIs are to meet evolving standards of legitimacy, then their fundamental governance structures, as well as their operational procedures, will need to be reformed to give greater voice to developing country recipients. In parallel, the next generation of climate finance organizations needs to promote the responsibility of recipient countries, by strengthening the national financing institutions that will implement mitigation and adaptation activities. This article will identify short and long term objectives and explain how they could be achieved through the study of past and ongoing international sustainable development projects and cooperation processes. One of the achievements of the UNFCCC negotiations in Cancun was the decision to establish a Green Climate Fund (GCF). Issues relating to what role it will play in providing sustainable finance at scale; how it will fit into the existing development assistance and climate financing architecture; how it will allocate finance to developing countries; and how finance will be delivered effectively, all remain to be clarified. This paper offers an early contribution to the debate by highlighting some of the more pressing design issues and describing the implications of these features. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]