by Benito Müller. Managing Director, Oxford Climate Policy, Director ecbi, Convener International Climate Policy Research, Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford

The ecbi was founded in 2005 by the late Saleemul Huq (IIED) as Head of the then “Workshop Programme”, and Benito Müller (OCP) as ecbi Director and Head of the “Fellowship Programme” (for more on the ecbi click here). During the 20^th Anniversary Oxford Seminar dinner on 27 August 2025 in the Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford, the ecbi Director looked back over the two decades of ecbi activities and highlighted some key accomplishments. This post is based on this summary.

2006-7: Adaptation Fund

The first discernible impact of the ecbi Fellowship Programme was on the operationalisation of the Kyoto Protocol Adaptation Fund in 2007 which took up a number of suggestions of two publications by ecbi Fellows:

• “Operationalising the Kyoto Protocol’s adaptation fund: A new proposal“(2006, lead: Mohammad Reazuddin, LDC Chair), and
• “On the Road to Bali: operationalising the Kyoto Protocol Adaptation Fund“(2007, lead: Enele Sopoaga, AOSIS Chair).

2010-12 Establishing the Standing Committee on Finance

The August 2010 Fellowship proposed “A General Blueprint for reforming the UNFCCC Financial Mechanism” including the proposal to establish “a standing committee (‘Finance Committee’)” under the COP. Farrukh Khan, one of the 2010 Fellows, presented the proposal in September 2010 to a meeting of high-ranking representatives from 46 countries in Geneva. COP 16 (November/December 2010, Cancun) decided to establish a Standing Committee on Finance (SCF) to assist the COP in exercising its functions with respect to the Financial Mechanism of the Convention. But it left open how exactly this should be done.

The August 2011 ecbi Policy Brief “What Functions? What Form? Operationalizing the  Standing Committee” by Farrukh Khan and Benito Müller was looking looking at the COP functions which the Standing Committee was meant to assist considering, in particular, how such assistance could enhance the implementation of the Financial Mechanism. Based on this analysis, the brief put forward detailed recommendations concerning the functions and the form of the Standing Committee. The SCF was operationalised in the following 12 months, holding its inaugural meeting in September 2012 (Bangkok), where the members were presented with a Note on Reforming the Financial Mechanism reflecting thoughts put together by the 2010 ecbi Fellowship.

The ecbi continued to work with the SCF. For example, in May 2013, at the first SCF Forum Konrad von Ritter and Diann Black-Layne presented their ecbi Policy Brief ‘Crowdfunding for Climate Change: a new source of finance for climate action at the local level?‘. And in June 2015 the ecbi organised a meeting in Bonn in conjunction with the 10th SCF meeting to discuss The Adaptation Fund in the new climate finance regime Its role in relationship with the GCF, having previously made a submission to the SCF on Institutional linkages and relations between the Adaptation Fund and other institutions under the Convention.

2009-2014 Developing and Operationalising “Enhanced Direct Access” 

The evolution of the ideas behind the concept of “Enhanced Direct Access” (EDA) and the role of ecbi have been documented in the ecbi Brief History of EDA (Dec 2015) which traces the idea back to a number of historic precursors, such as the Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau (KfW) under the Marshall Plan, the World Bank Kecamatan Development Program in Indonesia, and the Brazilian Amazon Fund. It then follows how the idea evolved under the Bali Action Plan, the Transitional Committee for the design of the Green Climate Fund (GCF) and finally, the GCF Board, culminating in the establishment of a GCF Enhancing Direct Access pilot at the 8th GCF Board meeting in Barbados (18 October 2014) with the support of GCFB members Dipak Dasgupta (India) and Amb. Jan Cedergren (Sweden) both long-time ecbi supporters.

The updated second edition of the Brief History (July 2021)includes a summary account of EDA programmes that have been implemented under the UNFCCC/Paris Agreement Green Climate Fund and Adaptation Fund, as well as the French SUNREF (Sustainable Use of Natural Resources and Energy Finance) programme, and ends with a forward looking section on ‘performance-based’ EDA.

In December 2024, the ecbi Director attended a Workshop on Enhanced Direct Access (EDA) for Locally Led Adaptation (LLA) organised by Anju Sharma of the Global Center on Adaptation together with the Green Climate Fund and the Adaptation Fund in Nairobi Kenya, which has given rise to work on an ecbi Concept Note on Local Enhanced Direct Access (forthcoming)

2014 – 2021 Common Time Frames

Following discussions at the Oxford Seminar (August 2014), the Co-chairs of the Paris Agreement negotiation (ADP) Artur Runge-Metzger and Kishan Kumarsingh (both of whom having attended the 2014 Oxford Seminar) stressed in their Scenario Note (8 Oct. 2014) that “it will be important in the October session, to further clarify and flesh out the operational aspects of the agreement. Key challenges that will need focussed attention in our work include: deepening the understanding on the longer-term cycle of contributions/ commitments, including its periodicity (length) and the functions of the steps proposed, such as any periodical consideration or assessment and review”. A number of 2014 Fellows then published an ecbi Concept Note on “A Dynamic Contribution Cycle: Sequencing contributions in the 2015 PARIS Agreement”(October 2014)

On 6 November 2014, Brazil officially submitted its Views on the Elements of the New Agreement under the Convention applicable to all Parties to the UN climate change negotiations regarding the new agreement which is meant to be agreed on in Paris at the end of 2015. The submission contained a “Dynamic Contribution Cycle” (for more, click here).

The Paris Agreement, adopted in 2015 left the issue of time-frames open to be negotiated with the Paris Agreement Rulebook. The ecbi continued to provide input in its Seminars and through its publications:

• February 2018 Common Time Frames: What & Why?
• October 2018 Common Time Frames Creating Space for Ambition in the Paris Agreement Rulebook
• June 2019 New Delhi Seminar on Common Time Frames.
• August 2019 The Dynamic Contribution Cycle: Enhancing Ambition on the Basis of Equity
• September 2020: Senior climate negotiators agree: Agreement on common time frames should be a priority for COP26.
• July 2021 Common Time Frames: Reducing the Options for a Decision in Glasgow.
• September 2021 Rolling Time Frames … the Article 4.10 landing zone in Glasgow

It was only at COP26 in Glasgow (Nov. 2021) that the Common Timeframe finally landed in the Paris Rulebook

2022 Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage

Following a presentation at the September 2022 Oxford Seminar on “Funding Arrangements for Loss and Damage” by Michai Robertson AOSIS Finance Lead Negotiator, the ecbi Director and two of the 2022 Fellows (Amb. Diann Black-Layne, HOD Antigua and Barbuda), Kishan Kumarsingh (HOD Trinidad and Tobago, now Head of the ecbi Fellowship and Trust-building Programme) wrote Elements of a Pilot Loss and Damage Response Fund. This was followed by three OCP/ecbi posts on the topic of L&D response in the same year before the COP:

Time to Respond! 4 November 2022

Elements for a Pilot Loss and Damage Response Fund 17 October 2022

The time is ripe … for serious discussions on finance to address and indeed respond to L&D through a dedicated pilot fund 17 October 2022

On 20 November 2022 in Sharm el Sheikh, the COP/CMA decided to establish a “Loss and Damage Response Fund” (for more click here), followed by another post on:

Some Thoughts on Access Modalities for the new Loss and Damage Response Fund 16 November 2023

Ongoing Initiatives 1: Quo Vadis COP?

In 2020, OCP/ecbi convened a team of experts to address an issue that had become recognised as a problem, namely the exponential growth of COP participants (see figure). They produced an ecbi Policy Report, published in March 2021:

Müller, B., J. Allan, M. Roesti and L. Gomez-Echeverri, with M. Karlsen, Quo vadis COP? Future Arrangements for Intergovernmental Meetings under the UNFCCC – Settled and Fit for Purpose, Oxford ecbi, March 2021.

The Report proposed that the Governing Body sessions of the multilateral climate treaties

“should be slimmed-down in size considerably to deal with technical matters related to implementation. Political elements, meanwhile, can be dealt with in processes outside the COPs that have already been established to support implementation on the ground – such as the Climate Action agenda, the Marrakech Partnership, the Regional Climate Weeks, and the technical meetings and workshops that support countries in formulating and implementing policies and measures in support of climate ambition.”

It was demonstrated that this can be done by separating the Sessions from the other elements currently associated with ‘COPs’, namely heads of government  Summits and ‘Expos’. Indeed, it was shown that under such a separation the number of delegates attending the Sessions would be small enough (around 5000) for them to become settled in Bonn, akin the June Subsidiary Bodies meetings.

Ongoing Initiatives 2: Climate Solidarity Levies and Alliances

(a) Air-ticket Levies

Following the example of the French air ticket solidarity tax for HIV/AIDS, Müller and Hepburn in October 2006 proposed an International Air Travel Adaptation Levy. The idea was further developed in a 2008 IIED briefing on Fairer Flying: An international air travel levy for adaptation, and submitted in 2008 to the UNFCCC AWC-LCA at COP 14 in Poznan (see Müller, IAPAL – Thirteen Questions and Answers, Oxford, ecbi, 2009). 

The submission was not successful, and the idea remained dormant until 2022, when it was taken up by the CAPS Programme and revived by Saleemul Huq as an innovative source of funding not for adaptation but for Loss and Damage, in particular for the then newly established multilateral Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage (see Müller, Filipp, and Huq, Climate Solidarity Levies: A Manifesto on an Innovative funding source for the new Loss and Damage Response Fund, Oxford Climate Policy Blog Post, 20 April 2023).

(b) Climate Solidarity Alliances

2023

The idea of a Climate Solidarity Alliance was first introduced in an August 2023 OCP Blog post in response to the Position Narrative by the African Union for Africa Climate Summit held in Nairobi in September 2023, with a view to being proposed at the Summit by President Ruto of Kenya and President Macron of France (who subsequently launched what was to become the Global Solidarity Levies Taskforce (GSLTF) at COP28 (Dubai December 2023).

In October 2023, the CSA was presented to the government of Antigua and Barbuda (a GSLTF founding member), which subsequently co-hosted a COP28 side event on solidarity levies and alliances (see also COP28: Call for a Climate Solidarity Alliance)

2024

In 2024 the concept of CSAs was fully developed:

• Müller, B., Founding the Climate Solidarity Alliance: Possible Next Steps, Oxford Climate Policy, [web blog], 7 May 2024;
• Müller, B., The Functions and Responsibilities of a Climate Solidarity Alliance & the Varieties of its Membership, Oxford Climate Policy, [web blog], Oxford Climate Policy, 28 November 2024;

At the same time, an idea proposed at the COP 28 side event by Stephen Hammer, then CEO of the New York Climate Exchange, namely to engage sub-national actors, in cases where a national participation is unlikely, such as in the case of US under a Trump administration was discussed in two publications:

• Franczak M., S. Najafy, with B. Müller, Could US Port Authorities Adopt Climate Solidarity Levies? A Case Study of New York city and Los Angeles, Oxford, OCP/IPI/ecbi, September 2024.
• Franczak, M., How US Cities and States can lead on climate action under a second Trump Administration, Oxford Climate Policy, [web blog], 28 November 2024.

The work undertaken during the year was presented in November at a COP 29 Side event (for more info, click here):

2025

In February, OCP/ecbi published the first version of the CSA Summary for Policy Makers (for the latest version click here).

A new idea that was developed in 2025 was that of regional Alliances, as first illustrated in the GRULAC CSA introduced in the ., Oxford Climate Policy submission to the “Baku to Belém Roadmap to 1.3t” (September 2025). This was later complemented with a regional Asia/Pacific and a regional Africa-Europe CSA (see the updated SPM)

In July, OCP/ecbi made a submission on The Climate Solidarity Alliance Solidarity Bonus Mechanism as vehicle for Enhancing and Redistributing Revenues to the Global Solidarity Levies Task Force, in part responding to the Premium Flyers Solidarity Coalition launched in June 2025 at the 4th International Conference on Financing and Development in Seville, Spain.

As it happens, all the members of this Coalition (at the time of writing) are either European or African (including Kenya and France) which is why it has been suggested that the proposed Africa-Europe CSA would be an ideal tool to distribute the solidarity collected through the Premium Flyers Solidarity Levy.

Regional Africa-Europe CSA (see CSA SPM, p.7)