While there is much jubilation that on Tuesday fresh commitments to the Green Climate Fund (GCF) have taken it nearly to the $10-billion mark, concerns are being raised that the new draft text for negotiations is too mitigation-centric and financial commitments from developed countries are still below par.

Brandon Wu, senior policy analyst with Action Aid, told The Hindu that the new text, which would be finalised by the weekend, did not reflect the concerns of developing countries which wanted commitments on finance, technology transfer and adaptation. The push for countries to declare only mitigation targets implied that developing countries had lost the advantage when they go to Paris and they want financial commitments from the developed world for adaptation.

Mr. Wu, who is on the board of the GCF as one of the two civil society members, said while developed countries were saying that the pledges to the GCF were a real step forward, it was just a drop in the ocean. Developed countries should say how much finances they would put forward, but that was not happening and they needed to raise $100 billion by 2020 and that figure seemed very remote now.

It would be difficult for developing countries to announce their targets next year if they didn’t know how much money was available, he said. The GCF would start distributing funds from next year but it was a small part of the finance puzzle.

During the high-level ministerial dialogue on climate finance, countries made fresh pledges to the GCF, including a much-awaited announcement from Australia, which pledged $ 165 million. Developing countries made the strong point that the GCF needed much more funds and countries needed their mitigation and adaptation actions to be supported by funds.

China was forthright in its demand for a clear road map by developed countries on the annual amount of finance till 2020 and after that. Developed countries should fulfil their obligations under the U.N. framework convention on climate change, Beijing said.

Union Minister of State for Environment Prakash Javadekar called for a clear road map for funding while appreciating the contributions to the GCF.

Mr. Javadekar, in an attempt to infuse some life to the dying Adaptation Fund, lauded Germany’s contribution of €55 million to the fund announced on Tuesday and suggested this could be the implementing arm of the GCF. He said the world would need to spend annually $600 billion to $1500 billion on climate actions and if there was no clear road map then outcomes would be sub optimal.

He called for global investments in India from developed countries and said they should collectively tap their markets and even pension funds or bond markets to complement funds for global climate actions. He said there should be more financial commitments coming out of Lima.

U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said countries which had not yet announced contributions to the GCF should do so with ambition and urgency and define a pathway to achieving the goal of $100 billion by 2020.