This brief history of Enhanced Direct Access traces the idea back to a number of historic precursors, such as the Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau (KfW) under the Marshall Plan, the World Bank Kecamatan Development Program in Indonesia, and the Brazilian Amazon Fund. It then follows how the idea evolved under the Bali Action Plan, the Transitional committee for the design of the Green Climate Fund (GCF) and finally, the GCF Board, culminating in the establishment of a GCF. The second updated edition includes a summary account of EDA programmes that have been implemented under the UNFCCC/Paris Agreement Green Climate Fund and Adaptation Fund, as well as the French SUNREF (Sustainable Use of Natural Resources and Energy Finance) programme, and ends with a forward looking section on 'performance-based' EDA.
European Capacity Building Initiative
Policy Briefs and Notes
Sharing experiences – particularly on the merits of different legislative approaches, lessons learnt, and good practices – can help drive efficient and successful implementation of climate action on the ground, and ultimately more ambitious action under the Paris Agreement. This policy brief considers the experience of four countries in Sub-Saharan Africa that have completed or initiated the process of developing framework laws: Kenya (the first country in Africa to adopt a climate change framework law), Eswatini, Nigeria, and Uganda.
As the global climate change negotiations shift to implementation mode, the institutions and process of the global negotiations will also have to adapt and become fit for purpose. This report proposes new arrangements that reflect this new role, particularly for the Conference of the Parties (COP). We propose that COPs should be slimmed-down in size considerably to deal with technical matters related to implementation. Political elements can be dealt with in processes outside the COPs that have already been established to support implementation on the ground – such as the Climate Action agenda, the Marrakech Partnership, the Regional Climate Weeks, and the technical meetings and workshops that support countries in formulating and implementing policies and measures in support of climate ambition.
Update: This report is referenced in the 27 October 2021 CarbonBrief UN Climate Talks Analysis: How delegations at COP climate summits have changed over time.
Bulk purchasing technology under the non-market approaches (NMAs) defined in Article 6.8 of the Paris Agreement could help developing countries to reduce the costs of climate-friendly technology. This policy brief describes how such NMAs could allow groups of developing countries to drive down costs by pooling procurement, and using reverse auctioning to “discover” the lowest price.
Agreement on the rules for "cooperative approaches" under Article 6 of the Paris Agreement will now not be possible until at least late 2021 because of the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result, countries will not be able to decide the role of cooperative approaches in their first Nationally Determined Contributions, which are meant to be finalised by the end of 2020 and implemented from the start of 2021. This policy brief summarises the progress made on Article 6 at the last UN Climate Change Conference in Madrid in 2019, and the key elements that still need to be agreed, to help negotiators and political leaders find common landing ground and resolve this issue by the end of 2021. Read it in conjunction with our 2019 policy brief of Article 6, which provides a more comprehensive explanation of each element.
Most countries will follow paragraph 24 of Paris Decision 1/CP.21 in the absence of agreement on an Ambition Cycle at the next climate conference. This comes with significant risks - not only to national ambition to address climate change and its impacts, but also to the process of assessing overall global progress, and of replenishing climate funds on the basis of national needs.
The international community has increasingly signalled a commitment to address gender issues in the global climate change negotiations, and in national-level implementation of climate action. This policy brief explores how this commitment has been put into practice, and identifies key challenges that still remain.
At the 2019 Climate Change Conference in Madrid, Spain, crunch issues – an unambiguous call for much higher climate ambition to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement, finance for the loss and damage caused by climate impacts, a fail-safe market mechanism that does not compromise environmental integrity, and credible financial contributions to enable action in developing countries – proved too difficult to resolve within the high-pressure, time-deficient confines of a COP, despite a two-day extension and the resilience and staying power of seasoned diplomats.
The governance arrangements for the Warsaw International Mechanism on Loss and Damage and its Executive Committee have been contested since the conclusion of negotiations on Article 8 of the Paris Agreement. Which supreme body – the Conference of the Parties (COP), the Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Parties to the Paris Agreement (CMA), or both – is / are responsible for guiding their work? This brief addresses legal and practical aspects of the governance debate.
What's holding up the Article 6 negotiations? Can differences be resolved at the 25th Conference of Parties (COP25) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change? This policy paper explains the crunch issues in Article 6 negotiations in generally accessible language. It sheds light on the key differences between negotiating Parties on the eve of COP25 in Madrid. Understanding the issues and Party positions is a key step to identify solutions in these highly political and technically complex negotiations.
