Protecting Climate Finance
This post is a brief description of the published Protecting Climate Finance by Transparency International in 2013.
The research is a follow-up of Transparency International’s 2011 Global Corruption Report on Climate Change which “highlighted the risks implicit in a funding landscape characterized by complexity and fragmentation.” One of the major concerns of TI is that although we are seeing many new bodies tasked with funneling, allocating, disbursing and spending climate finance, there is so much lack of anti-corruption systems, transparency and standards set out to prevent corruption.
In order to assess if the new bodies that deal with climate finance are able enough to implement their programmes without losing the finances through corruption, Transparency International embarked on evaluating some multilateral climate funds’ anti-corruption programmes. The funds included in the assess are the two Climate Investment Fund Trust Funds, the Least Developed Countries Fund, the Special Climate Change Fund, the Forest Carbon Partnership Facility, and the United Nations Programme on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (UN-REDD). Transparency International evaluated the multilateral Fund’s implementation of their anti-corruption policies in the global level to measure how they perform in terms of transparency, accountability, and integrity.
In parallel with the six new climate funds bodies, Transparency International carried out climate finance mapping and governance assessments in six countries where it has national chapters, namely: Bangladesh, Dominican Republic, Kenya, Maldives, Mexico and Peru.
The report includes fundamentally the major findings of Transparency International’s evaluation of the Forest Carbon Partnership Facility’s Readiness Fund, which started to operate in 2008 and set up by World Bank. The report being summarized here is divided into two parts: an accountability mapping and an anti-corruption assessment. Mapping means understanding the FCPF’s accountability framework while anti-corruption assessment evaluates anti-corruption within the Fund by analyzing its policies and procedures.
KEY FINDINGS
The following only describes a brief summary of the findings that Protecting Climate Finance report has. You can learn more about it by downloading the full report from TI website or by clicking the download button below this page.
Transparency
In terms of transparency, the report assessed transparent reporting aspect of the Fund, a requirement to fund actors to submit annually various narrative and financial reports to the Fund. Financial information is available through the FCPF Dashboard but detailed reporting and audits cannot be located.
Executive Decision-Making Transparency.
Although the FCPF has a number of Observers including civil society and communities, the co-chairs have the authority to “exclude such Observers from individual agenda items at their discretion.”
Information Requests and Appeals
There is no articulation of a way to access or submit an appeal to release undisclosed information.
Anti-Corruption Rules – Disclosure
Availability of anti-corruption rules and safeguards is not readily accessible.
Accountability
Lines of Accountability
Accountability on relationships among bodies in the Facility are quite clear but the Participants Committee and World Bank as Delivery Partner needs more clarification.
Integrity
Anti-Corruption Rules – Substance
A zero-tolerance of corruption policy is non-existent. Codes of conduct for ethical and anti-corruption rules and standards are partially in existence. Delivery Partners comply with their own rules, but there are no defined standards for all Fund actors.
Appeals
There is no procedure to appeal for decisions of the Participants Committee at present’s Fund policy.
Investigations
The World Bank’s investigatory and sanctioning methods that govern the Delivery Partner are clear and can be used as best practice example.
There is no accountability framework that would make individual Participants Committee Members accountable to each other.
Whistleblower Protection
The idea of for whistleblower protection at the Fund level is not mentioned, only the Delivery Partners have it in place.
Complaints Mechanisms
There is no grievance mechanism at the executive level. But the Fund has taken action to make sure that both Delivery Partners and REDD+ Country participants will have such mechanisms.
Sanctions
“There is a lack of clarity around the type of sanctions that can b applied to Committee Members both at the Fund level and through the national processes that they are subject to”, although “appropriate action” can be taken against them if there’s an issue of conflict of interest.
There’s clear sanctioning procedures within Delivery Partners that exist but the Fund hasn’t shown as “how and to what extent sanctions are required…”
Civil Society Participation
There seems to be some restrictions for Observer participation at Participant Committee meetings but they seem to have high degree of participation and contributing something during meetings.
Observers are allowed to provide input on some specific agenda items, but they are not allowed to propose any agenda item.
Please, read more about this report Protecting Climate Finance by clicking on the download button below. Thanks.