John Kerry, Share of Proceeds for Adaptation, and Loss and Damage Response Fund

On 9 November, the day after the US mid-term elections, US Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry launched Energy Transition Accelerator (ETA), an initiative designed to support developing country efforts to from fossil to renewable energy, with the help of the private sector and the voluntary carbon market.

According to a 7 November Washington Post article on the initiative,“political paralysis and public pressure are pushing companies to step up with their own emission pledges — and money to help poorer countries bearing the brunt of climate change’s impacts”  and it was indeed extremely welcome to find that ETA includes of what has become known as a Share of Proceeds for Adaptation, as stated in the State Department Press Release:^[1]https://eg.usembassy.gov/u-s-government-and-foundations-announce-new-public-private-effort-to-unlock-finance-to-accelerate-the-energy-transition/

“To help strengthen climate adaption efforts in vulnerable countries, five percent of the value of all credits generated through the ETA will be dedicated to international support for adaptation and resilience.”

Given that the ETA will seek broad alignment with evolving best-practice standards, it would be quite awkward for the best-practice standards, such as the IC-VCM’s Core Carbon Principles, not to follow suit and include a SOPA (for more on this, see “SOPA added to the proposed IC-VCM Core Carbon Principles”.

It is also interesting that the hyperlink in the quote leads to a Post article (5 Nov) on Pakistan leading the drive to establish “a dedicated loss-and-damage fund”, as reflected in the OCP blog post of 4 November.