North-South climate finance much smaller than "we have been led to believe"

An important post on the Brookings Institute site a few days ago (U.N. clarification: North-South climate finance may be closer to lower bound of their estimate) indicates that there may be a lot less North / South climate finance on the table than we have been led to believe.  Click through for the details and the impeccable sources (Martin Stadelmann and Timmons Roberts) but in any case be clear about the bottom line:

“Today [Feb 26, 2015] the U.N. has published a “clarification note” where it explains that the actual number for North-South climate finance may be closer to the lower bound of the $40-175 billion mentioned in its “Biennial Assessment and Overview of Climate Finance Flows” report. . .  This is an important clarification. . .  Our own 2013 estimate for North-South private climate finance flows was $10-37 billion, comprising foreign direct investment for renewable energy, recycling, and environmental technology manufacturing.

If we take the $2-37 billion range for North-South private finance according to existing estimates . . . and add the U.N. estimate of $35-50 billion for North-South public finance . . . total North-South climate finance is somewhere between $37 billion and $87 billion, clearly closer to the lower bound of the U.N. estimate of $40-175 billion, and certainly less than half of the upper bound.”

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