<article><p class="lead">Germany and its partners in the Mitigation Action Facility (MAF) will provide more than €100mn for a funding competition for carbon mitigation projects in developing and emerging countries, German minister of economic affairs and climate action Robert Habeck announced today.</p><p>The support is intended to help countries make their nationally determined contributions (NDCs) to the Paris climate agreement more ambitious, the ministry said. The MAF will organise the competition, identifying projects to act as a "showcase" for how to decarbonise the energy, industry and mobility sectors, which jointly account for about 67pc of global greenhouse gas emissions, the ministry said.</p><p>"We will only be able to advance in the fight against global climate change if we act in close solidarity with the countries of the Global South," Habeck said on the announcement of the move, made on the second day of the Global NDC Conference in Berlin.</p><p>Accelerating global climate action will be possible only by "redirecting" global financial flows, Habeck said, thus reducing "bad investments" and turning companies worldwide into a driver of global transformation.</p><p>Germany contributes to the MAF through its international climate protection initiative, IKI, which also supports developing countries and project developers to transition from the Kyoto Protocol's Clean Development Mechanism to the new UN carbon markets under Article 6 of the Paris deal.</p><p>The MAF is a joint multilateral initiative of the economy and climate ministry in co-operation with the UK and Danish governments, the European Commission and the Children's Investment Fund Foundation. The MAF emerged last year from the UN's nationally appropriate mitigation actions (NAMA) facility, with the name change effective from 2023. The NAMA facility last year supported activities in areas such as waste management in Mozambique, building retrofitting in Mongolia, solar photovoltaics in Egypt and coffee cultivation in Costa Rica. New projects approved last year by the NAMA facility were granted a total of €73mn.</p><p>Finance is one of the most controversial issues in current political climate negotiations. Developed countries have come under fire after missing a goal set in 2009 to provide $100bn/yr in climate financing to developing countries by 2020. Germany's foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, last month said the <a href="https://direct.argusmedia.com/newsandanalysis/article/2444918">target should be reached this year</a>.</p><p>German chancellor Olaf Scholz last month announced that <a href="https://direct.argusmedia.com/newsandanalysis/article/2445499">Germany will provide</a> an additional €2bn to the world's largest climate fund, the UN Green Climate Fund (GCF), taking Germany's total funding to the GCF to €4.25bn.</p><p>There is no "clear path" to show progress on climate finance this year, non-governmental organisation E3G's climate diplomacy lead, Alex Scott, warned this week ahead of the UN's Bonn climate conference, which will take place from 5-15 June. While many have been saying the $100bn pledge will be met this year, there is "no way of proving" this, Scott said.</p><p class="bylines"><i>By Chloe Jardine</i></p></article>
