E-Kantipur

The last piece in this column on the missing climate financing figures in Finance Ministry's bookkeeping courted some comments that such records were not necessary to be kept separately.

The main argument was that climate related budgets are for different cross-cutting sectors and that it involves interdisciplinary works through several ministries.

No doubt about that. But what was published on this space last week was not to suggest a one-window budget, nor was it about creating a new institutional arrangement for spending the money. It was simply about knowing what comes in and goes out as climate finance.

If that still does not make sense, then there is no point at criticising donor countries that they are not living up to their commitments and that they are double counting their regular aid as climate funds. Mind you, the Nepali officialdom too has joined this chorus of criticism by developing and least developed countries.

The complaints being made by these recipient countries are echoing the halls of the International Conference Centre in Durban, South Africa where the United Nations climate conference kicked off last Monday.

Let’s be clear about it: If you want your donors’ accounts to be straight, you need to keep yours that way first.

And that is something the Environment Ministry seems to have understood well and is therefore trying to do something about it, it appears at least.

But in its “effort to streamline” climate finance, there have been duplications of works that do not offer good example though - mainly on the part of donors.

For instance, one of the objectives of a technical assistance the ministry received from the Asian Development Bank in 2008 was to “formulate a draft funding mechanism for environment and climate change management.”

The assistance for “Strengthening capacity for managing climate change and the environment” had to be completed between 2009 and 2011. But before that deadline ended, the Environment ministry embarked on another project “strengthening national capacity on climate change.”

Supported by the Danish government, it has one of the primary objectives to  “prepare a framework for climate change fund.”

Both the assistances — by the ADB and the Danish government — have “managing climate funds” as one of the goals.

The duplication does not end just there.

The ADB-supported technical assistance was meant for “strengthening national capacity for managing climate change and environment.”

And the Danish-funded assignment launched last year was also for the preparation of a climate change strategy.

In simple words, both were about building capacity to deal with climate change.

So, why the second project when the first was doing almost the same thing?

The environment ministry can argue that the later study was within the broader framework of the climate change policy 2011, as it has in the terms of reference.

But then a very basic question comes up: What happened to the report of the earlier project? Did it ever come out?

And if it did, why was there another similar study before the report of the first one was implemented?

Having read the terms of reference of the Ministry of Environment’s new project supported by the Danish government, I chose to check this out with the first project’s donor, the Asian Development Bank - so much “particular” about transparency as it always is.

The basic idea was to find out if anything had come out of its technical assistance and if it was implemented.

My repeated emails and phone calls to the Kathmandu office of the bank however remain unanswered.

So much so, the multilateral agency had no answer even when asked which communities had benefitted from its technical assistance as it had been announced beforehand that there would indeed be such beneficiaries. So much for a multilateral agency that “promotes” good governance.

Meantime, there were talks about a study on climate finance by the Department for International Development (DfID) of the British government.

This was making rounds just when the government had signed with the Danish government “strengthening national capacity on climate change” agreement that was — for a recap — supposed to prepare the framework for climate change fund and the climate change strategy.

A source with the Danish Embassy in Kathmandu said, “We too have heard about the study (by the DfID), but we have told the government to make sure that there is no duplication and that there has to be coordination.”

As if all these were not enough, two climate finance related reports by the United Nations Development Programme came out just this month.

Broadly, one of them is about climate aid effectiveness and the other on reviewing climate-related bookkeeping.

“We have no idea about the project signed with the Danish government, but the two studies we did have a broader scope involving the ministry of finance, ministry of environment and the national planning commission,” said a source with the UNDP.

Donors and the government will certainly go on “justifying” the need for each of such studies to what they call streamlining climate finance.

But before they can actually do what they say, they have got to seriously streamline the studies themselves first.

Only then the left hand of the officialdom and the “donordom” would know what their right hand is doing. 

Khadka is a BBC journalist based in London

navin.khadka@gmail.com

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