Abstract

All major climate policy agreements - the UN Framework Convention, the Kyoto Protocol, and recently the Cancun Agreements- have stated that climate finance for developing countries will be ”new and additional”. However, the term “new and additional” has never been properly defined.
Agreeing a system to measure a baseline from which “new and additional” funding will be calculated will be central to building trust and realising any post-Kyoto agreement. We explore eight different options for a baseline, and assess each according to several criteria: novelty to existing pledges, additionality to development assistance, environmental effectiveness, distributional consequences, and institutional and political feasibility. Only two baseline options do well on these criteria and are therefore viable: "new sources only" and "above pre-defined business as usual level of development assistance".