Signs of spring -- developing countries protest Green Climate Fund

Though the German Green Party's Boell Foundation presents this deadlock as a crisis, it is actually good news. Further attempts by the rich countries, business & finance lobbyists to monetize / commodify the commons are being blocked at the UNFCCC's Green Climate Fund

2009 funding of the GCF

by poor countries -- another example of the tensions that have existed in climate and MDG/SDG negotiations since 2005, and that were exemplified in QEW's Chicago sign-on which went out sometime to-day to our Quaker partners under our 5-way agreement. For further news about the developing countries' demands for Sustainable Development goals, see peoplesgoals.org/join-the-campaign 

Not surprisingly, the official campaign for "leveraging private investment" would benefit the rich countries and Wall St, leaving the poor further in debt, without consultation/safeguards/monitoring, and forced to allow pillage of their natural resources to pay for it all -- an updated version of the infamous Washington consensus.

Excerpt from the actual Boell report (my emphasis in yellow)

"The sixth meeting of the Board of the Green Climate Fund (GCF) in Bali from February 19–February 21, 2014 was meant to propel the new Fund toward full operationalization by year’s end. 

After Bali, however, this tightly timed goal – which included the expected start of the GCF’s resource mobilization efforts in connection with the UN Secretary General’s extraordinary climate summit in New York on September 23rd – is in peril. 

"The 24 Board members left Bali with only a handful of actual decisions taken and many more postponed for the next Board meeting in late May, after old tensions between developed and developing countries flared up. At issue are competing approaches on how the GCF should support the paradigm shift towards low-carbon and climate-resilient development in recipient countries. Will the GCF operate as a fund closely 

tied to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) passing on primarily 

concessional public finance to all eligible Non-Annex I-Countries under the Convention? Or is the 

GCF to develop eventually into a more full-fledged climate bank with complex financial instruments* which could prioritize public funding to leverage private sector engagement  in only a few competitively selected countries and investment opportunities? 

[* for example: New Market Mechanisms, REDD, PES, LULUCF, Ocean offsets, green bonds, green economy -- to name only a few of the MOI proposed by the official UN campaign and its business allies in Global Partnership]