Comprehensive Climate Data Critical For More Funding

Comprehensive data on climate finance remains a critical step in pushing for more funds to champion the climate change agenda, a climate finance negotiator, Foster Gyamfi, has said.

In as much as Article 9 of the Paris Agreement asks developed parties to provide financial resources to assist developing parties with respect to both mitigation and adaptation of climate change, he maintains that one cannot make a case for extra funding at the Conference of the Parties (COP) without a detailed information on the inflows of the climate finance.

“Getting the right information on inflows of climate finance to the country means a lot. At least it helps us as a country to make a case in terms of policies, direction and for more funding because if you look at the Article 9 of the Paris agreement, it calls for developed countries to make funds available for us but if we do not know how much has come in and has been spent on our climate finance, we can’t make that case”, he explained.

Speaking at the third edition of the Pre COP 28 National Youth Summit organised by Strategic Youth Network for Development (SYND) Ghana he asserted that being accountable with climate finance lies with having the ability to track the inflows and this practice is equally important as the process of mobilising funds.

According to him, the Ministry of Finance has developed a tracking tool to track the inflows of climate finance the government receives and the data so far, indicates that the country is doing well in terms of the inflows committed to climate finance, but there’s more to be done.

“We did a climate expenditure review to compare what we did for the first five years up to 2015 and also from 2015 to 2020, we realized that the increment in terms of the inflows is between five to four percent of the total budgetary inflow, he noted.

For her part, the Lead Negotiator on Adaptation for the African Group, Patience Damptey, reiterated the significance of climate adaption for the continent saying “we believe that adaptation is our priority and we need to do a lot more for our people and communities to adapt”.

Assessing the progress of the continent in implementing the adaptation framework, she noted that the continent is doing its best but due to the cocktail of challenges, countries require extra resources to effectively implement their needs in terms of adaptation.

“I would not say the African countries are not pulling their weight, the fact is that we have so many issues such as poverty reduction, floods, droughts among others. So if you don’t have the extra resources, you cannot do much. I believe that countries within Africa, are doing much with their meagre resources even in terms of adaptation. What we need is the extra resources to be able to do so much and that is challenge”, she said.

Explaining the necessary measures taken by the African continent group in negotiating on adaptation at COP 28, she said the continent has come up with different targets looking at risk, vulnerability, planning, implementation and monitoring. With these targets, she said they will fight for it.

The Executive Coordinator of SYND, Chibeze Ezekiel, explained that the focus of the event is to educate the youth on what transpires at COP and also give them the opportunity to have an idea of the discussions the country’s negotiators intend talking about at COP.

Similarly, the Head of Climate Change and Policy Program at SYND, Patience Agyekum stressed that young people who take keen interest in the conversations at the event and build on the information received get access to different job opportunities.