Second Latin American and Caribbean Dialogue on Climate Finance in Latin America and the Caribbean

The Second Dialogue is organized by the Government of El Salvador, with support from the EU through its EUROCLIMA programme, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), the Central American Bank for Economic Integration (BCIE), the Latin American Development Bank (CAF), the UN Development Programme (UNDP) and the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), and among others.

Over 125 participants will attend from 20 Latin American and Caribbean Governments and 15 bilateral and multilateral agencies, civil society organizations and academia, along with international climate finance experts and climate finance experts from Asia-Pacific and Africa.

The Second Dialogue is to discuss: climate finance mechanisms and instruments; inter-institutional coordination on climate finance; potential of the private sector for climate finance; and assessing the impact of climate change on public expenditures. The Dialogue will be followed on 31 July by a meeting of the regional coordinators of EUROCLIMA.

The two day conference started Monday 29^th at Hotel Sheraton Presidente in San Salvador, El Salvador.

For more on this story go to:

http://climate-l.iisd.org/events/second-latin-american-and-caribbean-dialogue-on-climate-finance-in-latin-america-and-the-caribbean/

From Wikipedia:

Climate finance refers to financing channeled by national, regional and international entities for climate change mitigation and adaptation projects and programs. They include climate specific support mechanisms and financial aid for mitigation and adaptation activities to spur and enable the transition towards low-carbon, climate-resilient growth and development through capacity building, R&D and economic development. The term has been used in a narrow sense to refer to transfers of public resources from developed to developing countries, in light of their UN Climate Convention obligations to provide “new and additional financial resources,” and in a wider sense to refer to all financial flows relating to climate mitigation and adaptation.

Finance is sourced from public, private and public-private sectors and can be channelled through various intermediaries, notably BFIs, MFIs, development cooperation agencies, the UNFCCC (various funds including those managed by the Global Environment Facility), non-governmental organisations and the private sector. The financials flows can flow from developed to developing countries (North-South), from developing to developing countries (South-South), from developed to developed countries (North-North) and domestic climate finance flows in developed and developing countries.

According to the Global Trends in Renewable Energy Investment Report 2011, investments in renewable energy in 2010 reached a record of USD 211 billion (not including large hydropower). These amounts far exceed existing dedicated resources and those proposed under the promised by the developed world at the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Cancún Agreements.

The estimations for the needed financing for climate change vary according to the geographic, sectorial and activity coverage, timescale and phasing, target and the underlying assumptions. The 2010 the World Development Report preliminary estimates of financing needs for mitigation and adaptation activities in developing countries range from USD 140-175 billion per year for mitigation over the next 20 years with associated financing needs of USD 265-565 billion and USD30 – 100 billion a year over the period 2010 – 2050 for adaptation. The International Energy Agency’s 2011 World Energy Outlook (WEO) estimates that in order to avoid growing demand for energy through 2035, USD 16.9 trillion in new investment for new power generation is projected, with renewable energy (RE) comprising 60% of the total. The capital required to meet projected energy demand through 2030 amounts to $1.1 trillion per year on average, distributed (almost evenly) between the large emerging economies (China, India, Brazil, etc.) and including the remaining developing countries.

PHOTO: This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. English: Flow diagram Date   1 December 2009

Source            Bilateral Finance Institutions and Climate Change: A Mapping of Climate Portfolios Author Atteridge, A., C. Kehler Siebert, R.J.T. Klein, C. Butler, P. Tella