The G20 Development Working Group (DWG) has tasked an informal group of co-facilitators with developing a Dialogue Platform on Inclusive Green Investment (G20 DPGI) to promote the increase of private investment related to green growth and climate-related activities in developing countries, with a specific focus on lower middle income countries. The G20 DPGI will hone in on stocktaking and lessons learned from existing initiatives, as well as an extensive literature review, with the aim to better identify the barriers to private investment and the mechanisms that have been successfully used to overcome these. Drawing on these ideas, the G20 DPGI may also wish to explore new initiatives to attract world-scale institutional funds that could finance large investments. To be successful the dialogue platform should advance mutual understanding between publicly funded, donor programs and the diverse range of potential private investors, in order to better design financing instruments that efficiently use public funds to best mobilize and leverage private funds.
In June 2012, the Green Infrastructure Finance Framework Report was published to address the constraints in financing green infrastructure and to develop a new approach to accelerate investments in low-emission technologies. The approach includes a financing and advisory interface, which clarifies the principles and concepts of the shared financing roles recommended by the methodology. The Framework attempts to bring clean investments towards a more familiar financing environment and to distance them from the charged political debate that has adversely affected the progress in international climate change discussions for over a decade. The detrimental effect of climate change is growing, yet clean investments are still grossly insufficient making it necessary to rethink the approach to greening the global energy mix. The need for some level of concessional financing or outright subsidy support is widely understood but the approach must be equitable, non-political and deliver a sufficient level of support.
Low Carbon Development: Key Issues is the first comprehensive textbook to address the interface between international development and climate change in a carbon constrained world. It discusses the key conceptual, empirical and policy-related issues of low carbon development and takes an international and interdisciplinary approach to the subject by drawing on insights from across the natural sciences and social sciences whilst embedding the discussion in a global context.
This paper summarizes the additional uncertainty that is created by climate change, and reviews the tools that are available to project climate change (including downscaling techniques) and to assess and quantify the corresponding uncertainty.
Assuming that climate change and other deep uncertainties cannot be eliminated over the short term (and probably even over the longer term), it then summarizes existing decision-making methodologies that are able to deal with climate-related uncertainty, namely cost-benefit analysis under uncertainty, cost-benefit analysis with real options, robust decision making, and climate informed decision analysis. It also provides examples of applications of these methodologies, highlighting their pros and cons and their domain of applicability. The paper concludes that it is impossible to define the “best” solution or to prescribe any particular methodology in general.
Instead, a menu of methodologies is required, together with some indications on which strategies are most appropriate in which contexts.
This publication focuses on the review of policy and financing options to catalyse finance toward green, low-emission and climate-resilient development. It is part of a series of manuals, guidebooks and toolkits that draws upon the experience and information generated by the United Nations Development Programme’s (UNDP) support for climate change adaptation and mitigation projects in some 140 countries over the past decade. In a flexible and non-prescriptive manner, the reports offer detailed step-by-step guidance for the identification of key stakeholders and establishment of participatory planning and coordination frameworks; generation of climate change profiles and vulnerability scenarios; identification and prioritisation of mitigation and adaptation options; assessment of financing requirements; and development of low emission climate-resilient roadmaps for project development, policy instruments and financial flows.
This summary was prepared by Eldis.