Actor Atlas

See the Environmental Finance article Ex-UN climate chief ‘appalled’ at Green Climate Fund: "..basically the approach is to keep the private sector out…"

Nick Oates of Climatico, in The Green Climate Fund: Expectations and the Emerging Picture (November 8, 2011) explains in more detail the bias in the GCF evident from:

• articles on financial inputs
• articles on access to funding.

He refers to the integrated Green Climate Finance Framework (GCFF) proposed by Michael Liebreich of Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) as "a manifestation of the expectations of the private sector'', with public sector contributions making up around 10% of the fund, "used to leverage the remaining 90% from the private sector."

In the White Paper Towards a Green Climate Finance Framework, it is claimed that the proposed framework "is the only realistic approach to deliver the $100bn a year of investment promised in Copenhagen." Liebreich refers to existing blended funding mechanisms as possible candidates for certification under a Green Climate Finance Framework.

The report EU Blending Facilities: Implications for Future Governance Options (January 2011) compares the governance implications of blending mechanisms versus pure loans, and versus pure grants.

What do these implications mean for the current Green Climate Fund proposals?
Would it be effective and viable, or not, as Liebreich claims?
How big is the risk that the proposed fund becomes a silo missing synergies with, and opportunities to engage the private sector?

At what point should grant funding be replaced by more commercial forms of funding such as debt or equity? Read the opinion by MicroEnsure President and CEO Richard Leftley (DEVEX) (Dec. 5, 2011).