On 1 December 2010, NYU Law, together with the Tuck School of Business from Dartmouth College conducted a side event on “Institutions and Governance Mechanisms for Climate Finance” at the 16th Conference of Parties to the UNFCCC in Cancun.

The side event brought together an exciting panel of experts, including:

• R.K. Pachauri, TERI – discussing the importance of having a price on carbon  and the need to look, not just at international governance, but at institutions at the regional, national and local levels;
• Bryce Rudyk, Co-ordinator of NYU’s Global Climate Finance Project – discussing the Project’s latest research on an institutional regime for climate finance;
• Anant Sundaram, Tuck School of Business – discussing the role of corporations in addressing climate change;
• Zoe Tcholak-Antitch , Carbon Disclosure Project – discussing the innovative CDP, which gathers and collates information about climate-related policies and conduct from the private sector; and
• Clifford Polycarp, World Resources Institute – giving an overview of the current framework of public financial institutions providing climate finance.

Bryce’s presentation considered what the institutional framework may look like for climate finance, assuming that the regime will be a decentralized one with funds flowing from a range of public and private sources.  He identified six core institutional functions (policy and rule-making; securing commitments and raising funds; disbursing funds; promoting institutional coordination and linkage; monitoring performance and securing accountability; and compliance) and considered which institutions are currently performing these tasks. He then identified a number of institutional design considerations that need to be taken into account as the regime for governing climate finance develops. This framework for analysis will guide the Global Climate Finance Project’s future research on governance and institutions for climate finance.