Response to ED King of Climate Home Concerning Budget/voluntary Finace to

Support Participation at COP22

Nick Nuttall, Spokesperson UN Framework Convention on Climate Change
(UNFCCC), said:--Over the last 1 to 2 years, the UNFCCC has seen a decline in voluntary contributions
for participation of developing country delegates at our meetings as well as for
financing various activities of our work programme. (see table below)
While we have and continue to try and find efficiencies and cost savings, this situation
in respect to voluntary funding has an impact on the ability of the UNFCCC
Secretariat to support the climate process and the Parties (governments).
It is worth noting that this comes at a time when, for various reasons including the
adoption of the Paris Agreement, we are seeing an increase in our work programme
with a significant amount of this allocated under the voluntary funding as opposed to
the core funding envelope as core funding is also currently static.
There are perhaps several reasons for this, but certainly it is true that many donor
governments around the world are facing difficult budgetary conditions domestically
and this is perhaps reflected in the fact that all international organizations are
finding budgets constrained or diminishing.
In terms of participation, it is true to say that current resources available are not
sufficient to offer the same level of participation as in past years.
We are currently able to support participation from one delegate from each eligible
Party--instead of the traditional 2-- plus an additional delegate from Least Developed
Countries and Small Island Developing States.
We hope that payment of some pledged contributions will allow us to increase the
number of participants that can be supported but we will have to wait and see.
As with all public institutions, UNFCCC is coping with these resource constraints as
mentionedbut there may be delays in the delivery of some rather pressing
improvements and modernizations such as Information and Communications
technologies; a project to transform the secretariats web sites to meet the challenges
of the 21st C and constraints in terms of future participation of Parties, NGOs and
other relevant groups or even the holding of some workshops.
In respect to COP22 in Morocco, we do not anticipate any significant issues except in
the area of participationbut we are confident that there will be 15-20,000
participants in Marrakech and there will be a full programme of negotiations and
events.
Looking to the future, the Executive Secretary has launched a consultation process to
involve Parties in building a budget that will truly meet the needs of the UNFCCC
process. The next budget proposal will be considered at the SBI in May 2017.