By David Wojick
The UN Green Climate Fund (GCF) is neither Green nor about climate. They are mostly just doing normal foreign aid that the donor countries would be better off doing themselves. They have received and spent over $20 billion to date, with more billions coming.
For example, they fund a lot of water supply systems in dry countries. They call it “climate change adaptation,” but it is not adaptation to climate change. It is addressing a condition that has always existed. It is fraud to call this “climate funding.” The same is true for flood protection in flood-prone areas or improving existing farms, which they also do a lot of.
Moreover, much of this so-called adaptation funding actually increases CO2 emissions, so it is not even green.
A fine example is their biggest funding to date, which is part of the huge Jordan Desalination Project. The GCF says that Jordan is among the world’s driest countries, so it certainly needs water. But Jordan has been this dry throughout its history, so the project has nothing to do with climate change.
Then too, desalination uses lots of electricity, and Jordan’s electric power production is around 70% fossil-fueled, mostly with natural gas. The project includes a token solar facility, but it only covers a small fraction of the 24/7 energy required for desalination and pumping the water up to the users, most of whom are around 1,000 meters higher than the plant.
Nor is this a GCF project. Exact numbers are hard to come by, but the GCF share of the $6 billion budget looks to be around just 5%. The rest is an international grouping of standard foreign aid sources, including development banks and individual countries.
In fact, GCF boasts that it normally just co-funds projects via a minority share. In many cases, probably most, these co-funders are standard foreign aid sources. This may help explain why many of the projects GCF funds are neither green nor climate-change-related. Countries getting foreign aid are getting real help.
The glaring question is why GCF donor countries are running some of their foreign aid through the GCF. If they want to do green climate stuff, they would be better off doing it themselves. If they think the GCF is doing green climate stuff with their money, they are being cheated.
What makes this trickery even worse is that the GCF is a truly inefficient, hence bloated, bureaucracy. A lot of the money is going to administrative costs and fees, which normal foreign aid does not incur.
To begin with, the GCF does not fund projects directly. It does it via what are called “accredited entities.” Here is how the GFS puts it:
“The GCF AE network comprises 158 entities approved by the Board for accreditation. The network includes a wide range of entities such as government ministries, national development banks, multilateral and commercial banks, United Nations agencies, international financial institutions, and national and international non-governmental organizations.”
These entities bring proposed projects to the GCF. In many cases, perhaps all, the budget will include their fee, which could be substantial. Accreditation itself is an elaborate process that must get paid for.
Then too, the project proposals and the proposal process are so elaborate that the GCF has a program to fund their preparation called the “Project Preparation Facility. Here is the GCF’s description:
“The Project Preparation Facility (PPF) provides financial and technical support through grants, both reimbursable and non-reimbursable, as well as equity, to support the development of high-quality project and programme funding proposals for submission to the Green Climate Fund (GCF).”
There are also things called “institutional capacity building” and “readiness.” GCF is even developing regional offices in developing countries around the world.
All of this expensive administrative spending is just waste when compared to the existing system of standard foreign aid.
It makes no sense for donor countries to run billions of dollars of their limited foreign aid money through the fraudulent and wasteful Green Climate Fund.
