Ensure resources to developing nations on climate change: India

United Nations: As the global community readies to adopt an ambitious post-2015 development agenda, India has highlighted the importance of ensuring enhanced resources to developing countries to combat climate change. [caption id=“attachment_2090249” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Getty Images[/caption] “It is important to ensure that the enhanced provision of resources to developing countries for climate change and environmental concerns is additional and not at the cost of traditional development finance. “The present double counting of climate finance with Official Development Assistance (ODA) is a matter of concern,” counsellor in the Indian Mission to the UN Amit Narang said. Even though ODA levels have regrettably declined, this does not diminish their relevance and ODA would remain relevant and important in the post-2015 period, he said, adding that much of the recent discourse has focused on the insufficiency and declining role of ODA. “In fact the broader agenda envisaged under the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG)s would require ODA levels to be enhanced and scaled up,” Narang said in the General Assembly debate on ‘Means of Implementation for a Transformative Post-2015 Development Agenda’ yesterday. He said the organisation of Financing for Development Conference in Addis Ababa in July this year is a welcome opportunity to enrich global efforts to forge an ambitious set of ‘means’ for implementing the agenda. “The linkage between the Post-2015 and Financing for Development processes must be seen through the lens of ‘complementarity’. The objective of the Financing for Development Conference is not to replace the Means of Implementation segment under the Post-2015 Development Agenda, but to complement it,” Narang said. He said the broader and integrated development template of the SDG will require an integrated and comprehensive financing strategy to ensure the provision of additional, predictable and stable flows of resources to developing countries. Narang noted that the starting point for forging a revitalised global partnership must be to draw lessons from the implementation of Millenium Development Goals, where the keys failures included a lack of integration and synergy between the substantive goals and the Global Partnership framework. An excessive reliance on donor-recipient framework to the detriment of systemic issues for boosting growth and a complete absence of monitoring and accountability of the global partnership against agreed targets and indicators. For South-South cooperation to live up to its potential, it must be allowed to grow under its own impetus, he said. “It can neither be expected to meet the shortfall in nor should it be straitjacketed in terms of rigid rules or policy prescriptions derived from North-South aid,” he said. PTI