By Patricia Blanc-Gonnet Jonason and Richard Calland
Abstract
A concrete result of the 2011 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Durban (COP17) was the establishment of the Green Climate Fund (GCF), with the aim of channelling $100 billion per year from developed countries to developing countries to support their efforts to respond to climate change and promote sustainable development. The emerging global architecture for climate finance raises significant questions related to public policy and environmental governance. Participatory governance practices, including freedom of information, are increasingly considered effective tools for both coping with environmental problems and finding sustainable solutions to development challenges. Moreover, without sufficient transparency in their decision making, the various climate funds are unlikely to attract a sufficient supply of urgently needed finance, and the ambitious targets of the GCF will be unmet. Yet, the question of the modality and process for governing climate finance is undetermined and obscure. The complexity of climate finance stems from a multi-level structure with international, regional, national, and sub-national actors; multi-sector dimensions, with both public and private donors and recipients; and the sector’s global/multilateral/multidirectional character. This article amplifies the “transparency pressure points” in climate finance generally and the GCF specifically. Public policymaking, in response to the many complex and urgent climate change challenges, may depend on securing the principle of freedom of information within the global climate finance architecture.
Patricia Blanc-Gonnet Jonason is an assistant professor in the Public Law Department at Södertörn University, Stockholm, Sweden. Her main research interests are on the right of access to information and environmental governance.
Richard Calland is an associate professor in public law at the University of Cape Town. He is a member of the World Bank’s Independent Access to Information Appeals’ Board and a founding director of the African Climate Finance Hub.
Calland and Jonason are co-directors of the International School for Transparency.