On Friday December 12, 2014, delegates to the UNFCCC COP 20 discussed capacity building for climate finance at the event, 'Tools for Climate Finance Readiness: building capacity to support increased finance flows,' sponsored by Transparency International and adelphi, with the support of the Federal German Foreign Office, Climate Diplomacy, BMUB, NORAD, and the European Commission.
At this side event, Dennis Tänzler presented the Climate Finance Readiness Training toolkit “CliFiT”. It has been developed by adelphi and designed to support and strengthen countries in building coherent national climate finance frameworks, accessing international financial resources (e.g. Green Climate Fund), and spending these funds effectively and transparently. Find more on the CliFiT Tool Kit here.
Linking the Atlantic and Pacific oceans across the Latin American landmass has often been presented as one of the holy grails of development for the region. While China’s idea of a ‘Nicaraguan Canal’ has made headlines globally, another major infrastructure project is in the works further south: the Bi-Oceanic Railway. The idea has already spurred transboundary environmental cooperation, but the public is still in the dark.
Using a progressive environmental security concept can help to tackle a range of environmental issues related to armed conflict, such as deforestation, loss of biodiversity, tensions over natural resources, conflict pollution, and damage to ecosystems. The environment can actually play a role in peacebuilding. This article briefly outlines why such an inclusive and environmental protection approach is needed and how it could be implemented.
Climate action and free trade have been perceived as contrary agendas for a long time. Despite more and more governments seeing tremendous potential for win-win outcomes, aligning trade and climate has become harder. This is due to changes in our current geopolitical landscape, as Christian Hübner explains in light of the upcoming G20 summit.
Human activity has caused the temperature of the Earth and its atmosphere to rise by about 1°C above pre-industrial levels, triggering fundamental changes to the planet’s physical and social landscapes. On 8 October an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned that temperatures were rising faster than expected, and that 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels could occur as early as 2030.