DEA Secretary says OECD’s report claiming significant progress on a roadmap for $100 bn a year climate change financing by 2020 is “deeply flawed and unacceptable”
New Delhi : A day before the crucial climate conference in Paris, Department of Economic Affairs (DEA) Secretary Shaktikanta Das questioned the OECD report claiming significant progress on a roadmap for USD 100 billion a year climate change financing by 2020, saying it is “deeply flawed and unacceptable”.
During the recent Lima World Bank/IMF meetings, India had raised the issue of a roadmap for USD 100 billion a year climate change financing by 2020. “… our Climate Change Finance Unit, Department of Economic Affairs, Ministry of Finance and its experts have mentioned that the OECD report appears to have overstated progress,” the Finance Ministry said.
Das further said that “we need to establish more credible, accurate, and verifiable numbers on the true size of the mobilisation of climate change finance commitments and flows from developed to developing countries.” The OECD, in partnership with Climate Policy Initiative (OECD-CPI), recently released a paper ‘Climate Finance in 2013-14 and the USD 100 billion goal’.
The preliminary estimates were that the mobilisation of climate change finance from developed to developing countries had reached USD 62 billion in 2014 and USD 52 billion in 2013, equivalent to an annual average over the two years of USD 57 billion. The discussion paper examined “carefully the OECD report’s accuracy, methodology and verifiability of the numbers reported. It finds serious problems on all counts”. Numbers were derived on self-reported basis from self-interested players, and open to “gaming” and exaggeration.
“We are very far from the goal of USD 100 billion in climate change finance flows annually by 2020. This OECD report needs improvement. The credibility gap is too big,” the discussion paper said.
