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Much of the skeleton of the Green Climate Fund has been assembled in the past couple of years. Incheon City, South Korea, now hosts its shiny headquarters. Hela Cheikhrouhou, a Tunisian who previously directed the African Development Bank's department of energy, environment and climate change, now serves as the fund's first executive director. As of mid-August, 46 countries had nominated an internal authority to be the focal point of their interactions with the fund. The responsibilities of the secretariat, trustee and investigating bodies are taking shape. And three thematic funding windows have been established so far, one for mitigation, another for adaptation and a third to engage the private sector, and further subdivision of the first two is expected. Yet, despite this progress, there is little flesh on the bones: for a fund that is supposed to dispense around US$100 billion annually starting in just six years' time, today's sum of the promised contributions amounts to US$1.083 billion, which is feeble.

This is why the fund's board has voted to hold a one-off, ad hoc pledging conference, to be held at an as yet undecided location in the second half of November. Sandwiched between two other high-level climate meetings — September's climate summit organized by United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and December's Conference of the Parties, this year in Lima, Peru — the pledging conference is intended to jump-start initial contributions to the fund and simultaneously create space for matters other than its dearth of cash to be discussed in Lima. Wisely, it will also take place after the US midterm elections. The US is highly unlikely to propose any contribution before these — meanwhile other parties have incentives to keep their cards to their chest until the scale of the US pledge is known.

Developing countries, in a show of solidarity, have been forthright about what would constitute a successful meeting. They hope to finish the year with $15 billion committed to the fund, to be spent over three or four years. That would be roughly double the amount pledged to the Climate Investment Funds, which have 'sunset' clauses anticipating the day when the Green Climate Fund can take over. It would also signal that Annex I countries view the fund in a way that is commensurate with its agreed global role — in a recent internal document by the fund, the grand phrase 'paradigm shift' (in the context of the carbon intensity of development pathways) appears no less often than every third page.

How to get to $15 billion is far from straightforward (Table 1). Indeed, discussions behind the scenes suggest that some amount shy of $10 billion looks more likely. And many of those watching the process have concerns about the broader timescale and the structure of November's meeting. Germany is so far, and by far, the biggest pledger to the fund with a promise of €750 million (US$1 billion). “I know that in Germany there was a lengthy discussion between the ministries, and between the government and parliament about this pledge,” says Jan Kowalzig, Oxfam Germany's climate adviser. “The earlier these pledges come, the more pressure there is on other countries that haven't made pledges.” Norway and France are well into the process of putting the necessary ducks in order to make announcements — and France, if the history of multilateral donations is any guide, does not like to appear less generous, capable or willing than Germany. But with the US midterms on 4 November, the build up to the pledging conference may be a scramble.

1. Müller, B. South-South Solidarity in Climate Finance: A GCF operated Southern Solidarity Fund (Oxford Climate Policy Concept Note, April 2014); http://www.oxfordclimatepolicy.org/publications/documents/GCFSSFfinal.pdf
2. Ciplet, D., Müller, B. & Roberts, J. T. How Many People Does It Take to Administer Long-Term Climate Finance? (European Capacity Building Initiative Policy Report, 2010); http://www.oxfordclimatepolicy.org/publications/documents/StaffingIntensityOctober2010.pdf
3. Fenton, A., Wright, H., Afionis, S., Paavola, J. & Huq, S. Nature Clim. Change 4, 650–653 (2014).
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