An initiative by the United Nations meant to promote green energy has been plagued with inefficiency and rampant funding of programs through corrupt governments.
The Green Energy Climate Fund had ambitious goals when it was launched by the United Nations in 2010. Based in Songdo, South Korea, and employing 250 people, the organization’s mission is to boost renewable energy development in third-world countries with money donated from richer countries.
Former President Barack Obama was a major supporter of the initiative and pledged $3 billion of U.S. taxpayer dollars.
The Obama administration was only able to donate $1 billion before President Donald Trump entered office. Unfortunately for the GCF, the Republican president was not a fan of the program. In his 2017 decision to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris Agreement, Trump also indicated he would not be donating the remaining $2 billion.
While his decision was widely derided by environmentalists and other progressive groups, not everyone agreed the GCF was worth investing in.
“This is a welcome development, given the endemic corruption in the countries and organizations on the receiving end of GCF dollars,” Ross Marchand, the director of policy at Taxpayer Protection Alliance, said in a statement to The Daily Caller News Foundation. The Taxpayer Protection Alliance, which monitors wasteful spending by the U.S. government, has been critical of the GCF’s handling of money.
“How can we trust, for instance, that the $5 million given by the GCF to the Tajikistan government will be allocated wisely, given the country’s abysmal corruption rankings? Given the exposure of ‘anti-corruption’ officials in that country as corrupt themselves, there is absolutely zero accountability for dispersed U.S. dollars,” Marchand continued.
In the eight years since it began, the GCF has committed around $4 billion to more than 75 projects around the world. However, a number of its investments have struggled to implement their intended goals, exemplifying the realities that come with doing business in impoverished, dysfunctional countries.
For example, a $30-million solar project in Zambia has been delayed repeatedly. Engineers for the project cite the government’s inability to provide basic information as a reason for the continued setbacks.
Hope for better renewable energy development in the African country appeared less likely after members of Zambia’s Industrial Development Corporation were revealed to have falsified legal documents and involved in worldwide, criminal activity.
Vietnam — a nation that is ranked 107th out of 180 in Transparency International’s index of corrupt countries — is also a recipient of GCF investment.
The Southeast Asian country received $80 million in funding, along with another $100 million from the World Bank.
A government executive in Vietnam’s energy industry was sentenced in January to life in jail for embezzlement and corruption — giving the international community reason to worry about its investments.
“American taxpayers deserve better than having their hard-earned dollars redistributed to strongmen in their cronies in the name of ‘sustainability,’” stated Marchand.
Read more at Daily Caller
The GCF just like the IPCC just another way for liberal democrats to waste tax money on the Useless Nations we already know how the democrats are a Tax & Spend bunch of scoundrels
Corruption in many of the countries receiving money from the Green Climate Fund is so bad that we can be certain that most of the money will end up in official’s bank accounts, often outside of their country. That is one reason these nations are insisting that funding continue as promised.
However, we are in no position to look down on these countries for their corruption. We many not have the same problem as far as financial corruption. However, we have massive scientific corruption. NOAA is continuing altering data to support the climate change movement. The extreme cold of last fall in the United States has been wiped from the official records. NOAA has changed the data to make the past (before 1950) colder and more recent temperatures warmer. This is a matter of public record and undeniable. We have our own corruption problem.
Money sent to corrupt unaccountable nations ? But isn’t that the point ?
Does anyone seriously think tin pot dictators have nice little audited statements ?
All they have done is bought them a better Paris flat and a few new Bentleys .
It is the globalists’ worldwide agenda for resources and human control. All those dollars given out in the name of Global Energy Fund, eventually return back to the world bankers and manufacturers. They know what they are doing, it is a rush to globalism, where everything will be controlled and distributed by some few elitist individuals.
Substaible development,Agenda 21 and the ideologies of sinister men like Marice Strong revert us back to being surfs living and working on land he and his ilk own