As part of the UN climate negotiations in Durban “Developed countries are trying to allow multinational corporations and financiers to directly access Green Climate Fund financing” reads a press release issued today by Friends of the Earth International.

The fund was created in the previous Conference of the Parties (COP) to the United Nations Convention on Climate Change held in December of last year in Cancun, Mexico. This year the countries began to work multilaterally to define the fund’s structure and composition.

Friends of the Earth exposes that developed countries led by the US, UK and Japan are seeking mechanisms that will allow corporations to “bypass developing country governments and their national climate strategies to get to public money”.

“This attempt to hijack developing countries’ funding is outrageous. Communities need this money to address climate change and to
finance their own development – without repeating the same mistakes that the rich countries have made,” said Karen Orenstein from Friends of the Earth US.

The issue of the Green Climate Fund and its growing importance was one of the key issues mentioned by Lidy Nacpil of Jubilee South in interview with Real World Radio. Jubilee South has regional representation in Latin American, Africa and Asia-Pacific. The network works against the debts imposed by the North that affect developing nations.

Nacpil said the Green Climate Fund as it has been proposed is “unacceptable” because “they are opening a big window for financing to private corporations which will lead to more profits from pollution”.

The governments of developed countries should put a fund so that people from developing countries are helped to deal with the impacts of climate change, as part of their “obligation” of “reparation for their climate debt”, she said.

The Filipino leader added that the Green Climate Fund should be “free from any sort of imposition, influence or pressure, or any role for the World Bank, and from the regional banks, like the Asian development Bank”. “We are demanding that the board and the structure of the fund be democratic which for us means the majority coming from developing countries or countries of the South”, she added.

Nacpil demanded “There should be no role at all for the private sector in climate finance” so there should be “no window that will provide finance to private corporations”. “The Green Climate Fund should go to communities, to people and not go to private sector”.

She concluded by highlighting the concept of “climate debt” and the demand for “reparations” of climate debt. She explained the climate debt is part of a bigger ecological debt that is owed to peoples of the South, who are the most affected by climate change. “Rich governments, the corporations and the elites must pay this debt, must pay it in terms not only of finance but also of restoring the Earth and the environment to a safe condition and that means first of all that they must take steps to stop the pollution”.

Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/foei