Financing Measures to Avert, Minimise and Address Loss and Damage: Options for the Green Climate Fund (GCF)

This report was prepared with financial support from the German Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ). We are grateful to the written comments and suggestions provided by Olivia Serdeczny (Climate Analytics) and Andrea Iro (GCF Secretariat). This report benefitted from the input by Raju Chhetri (PRC), Zoha Shawoo (SEI) and others during discussions with the Working Group on Financing Loss and Damage on 13 May 2020. It further benefitted from the input by Mariya Aleksandrova (DIE), Jean-Paul Brice Affana (Germanwatch), Rebecca Carter (WRI), Stephane Hallegatte (World Bank), Tessa Kelly (IFRC), Sönke Kreft (MCII), Erling Kverevik (Directorate for Civil Protection, Norway), Donna Mitzi Lagdameo (IFRC), Nicolina Lamhauge (OECD), Reinhard Mechler (IIASA), Jelena Milos (EU Commission), Le-Anne Roper (Ministry of Economic Growth and Job Creation, Jamaica), Sarah Zügel (Federal Ministry for Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety), Christoph von Stechow (BMZ) and Sebastian Forsch (BMZ) during discussions at an Expert Roundtable on 24 June 2020.1 Introduction 2 Background: loss and damage in the UNFCCC negotiations 3 Background: research on loss and damage 3.1. Conceptualisation and framing of Loss & Damage 3.2. The Costs of Loss & Damage 3.3. Financing Loss & Damage 4 Loss and Damage and the GCF 4.1. Framework conditions to finance action on loss and damage under the GCF Governing Instrument Strategic Plan Results Management Framework Investment Criteria 4.2. Current funding for action on loss and damage under the GCF Occurrence of L&D-related terminology WIM ExCom’s workstreams and the GCF portfolio 5 Discussion and Conclusion 5.1. Range of policy options 5.2. Recommendations References Annex 1: The Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage Annex 2: An Overview of Investment Support Instruments Relevant for L&D Annex 3. Extent to which the GCF investment criteria’s indicative assessment factors are relevant for the WIM ExCom Workstreams Annex 4. Methods used for section 4.

Conditional nationally determined contributions in the Paris Agreement: foothold for equity or Achilles heel?

The Paris Agreement’s success depends on parties’ implementation of their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) towards the Paris Agreement’s goals. In these climate action plans, most developing countries make their mitigation and adaptation contributions conditional upon receiving international support (finance, technology transfer and/or capacity building). While provision of support for NDC implementation could enhance equity among countries, the feasibility of NDC implementation might be challenged by the large number of conditional NDCs. This paper addresses the implications of this tension based on an analysis of all 168 NDCs. We find that feasibility is challenged because conditions applied to NDCs are often not well defined. Moreover, the costs of implementing all conditional contributions are too high to be covered by existing promises of support from developed countries, even if the entire annual $100 billion of climate finance were earmarked for NDC implementation. Consistent with principles of equity and the prioritization in the Paris Agreement, a higher proportion of Least Developed Countries (LDCs) and Small Island Developing States (SIDS) have conditional NDCs than do other countries. However, differences between the distribution of countries requesting support and those currently receiving support, in particular among middle-income countries, demonstrates potential tensions between feasibility and equity. The article concludes with recommendations on how cost estimates and updated NDCs can be strengthened to ensure support for NDC implementation is targeted more equitably and cost-effectively. Key policy insights -Support requested by developing countries to implement conditional NDCs far exceeds existing funding pledges. -Differences between existing patterns of financial assistance, and those implied by requests under conditional NDCs, mean that supporting NDCs may require a significant shift in provider countries’ priorities for allocating climate finance. This may challenge feasibility. -The Paris Agreement’s provisions on prioritizing LDCs and SIDS offer valuable guidance in making difficult choices on allocating support. -To increase the likelihood of attracting support, developing countries (assisted by capacity building as needed), should include credible cost estimates in future NDCs and formulate investment plans. -By outlining plans to mobilize support in their NDCs, developed countries can reassure developing countries that raising the ambition of NDCs is feasibl

The SAWA corpus: a parallel corpus English-Swahili

Research in data-driven methods for Machine Translation has greatly benefited from the increasing availability of parallel corpora. Processing the same text in two different languages yields useful information on how words and phrases are translated from a source language into a target language. To investigate this, a parallel corpus is typically aligned by linking linguistic tokens in the source language to the corresponding units in the target language. An aligned parallel corpus therefore facilitates the automatic development of a machine translation system and can also bootstrap annotation through projection. In this paper, we describe data collection and annotation efforts and preliminary experimental results with a parallel corpus English- Swahili.

Mg-Ni-H films as selective coatings: tunable reflectance by layered hydrogenation

Unlike other switchable mirrors, Mg2NiHx films show large changes in reflection that yield very low reflectance (high absorptance) at different hydrogen contents, far before reaching the semiconducting state. The resulting reflectance patterns are of interference origin, due to a self-organized layered hydrogenation mechanism that starts at the substrate interface, and can therefore be tuned by varying the film thickness. This tunability, together with the high absorptance contrast observed between the solar and the thermal energies, strongly suggests the use of these films in smart coatings for solar applications.Comment: Three two-column pages with 3 figures embedded; RevTE

Proximity effect in Nb-Mo layered films: Transition temperature and critical current dependence on period

The behavior of the transition temperature and critical current density for a Mo/Nb repeated bilayer system as a function of the number of periods was explored. The measured values of the transition temperature are compared to the theoretical predictions for the proximity effect in the dirty limit. We find that the transition temperature does not decrease as the number of periods increase. In addition, inductive critical current density measurements also show a scaling that indicates the superconductivity properties are not dependent on the number of bilayers.Comment: 13 pages, 6 figures, to be published Journal of Applied Physic

Синтетические и растительные лекарственные средства с эстрогеноподобной активностью

Описаны синтетические и растительные соединения с эстрогеноподобной активностью. Рассмотрены механизмы их действия и возможности клинического применения.Описано синтетичні й рослинні сполуки з естрогеноподібною активністю. Розглянуто механізми їх дії та можливості клінічного використання.Synthetic and herbal compounds with estrogen-like activity are described. The mechanisms of their action and possibility of clinical application are discussed

Tempering and enabling ambition: how equity is considered in domestic processes preparing NDCs

The considerations of how Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) to global climate action under the Paris Agreement are ambitious and fair, or equitable, is expected to guide countries’ decisions with regards to the ambition and priorities of those contributions. This article investigates the equity aspect of the NDCs of four cases (Canada, the EU, Kenya, and South Africa) utilizing a combination of document analysis and expert interviews. It interrogates both the NDC documents themselves and, uniquely, the role of international and domestic equity considerations within the domestic policy processes that led to the formulation of the NDCs. For this, 30 participants and close observers of these processes were interviewed. We find countervailing effects of equity on ambition, with an enabling, or ambition-enhancing, effect resulting from international equity, in that these four Parties show willingness to do more if others do, too. In contrast, tempering effect appears to result from domestic equity concerns, for example with regards to real, perceived, or anticipated adverse distributional impacts of climate action across regions, sectors, and/or societal strata. Political cultures differ across the four case studies, as do the key actors that influence domestic policies and the preparations of NDCs. This paper also demonstrates that research on equity in NDCs can benefit from expanding its scope from the contents of NDC submissions to also examine the underlying decision-making processes, to generate insights that can contribute to future NDCs being both equitable and ambitious

Effect of atomic ordering on the magnetic anisotropy of single crystal Ni80Fe20

We investigate the effect of atomic ordering on the magnetic anisotropy of Ni80Fe20 at.% (Py). To this end, Py films were grown epitaxially on MgO (001) using dc magnetron sputtering (dcMS) and high power impulse magnetron sputtering (HiPIMS). Aside from twin boundaries observed in the latter case, both methods present high quality single crystals with cube-on-cube epitaxial relationship as verified by the polar mapping of important crystal planes. However, X-ray diffraction results indicate higher order for the dcMS deposited film towards L12 Ni3Fe superlattice. This difference can be understood by the very high deposition rate of HiPIMS during each pulse which suppresses adatom mobility and ordering. We show that the dcMS deposited film presents biaxial anisotropy while HiPIMS deposition gives well defined uniaxial anisotropy. Thus, higher order achieved in the dcMS deposition behaves as predicted by magnetocrystalline anisotropy i.e. easy axis along the [111] direction that forced in the plane along the [110] direction due to shape anisotropy. The uniaxial behaviour in HiPIMS deposited film then can be explained by pair ordering or more recent localized composition non-uniformity theories. Further, we studied magnetoresistance of the films along the [100] directions using an extended van der Pauw method. We find that the electrical resistivities of the dcMS deposited film are lower than in their HiPIMS counterparts verifying the higher order in the dcMS case.Comment: 8 page