Developed country governments have repeatedly committed to provide new and additional finance to help developing countries transition to low-carbon and climate-resilient growth.

This assessment considers UK efforts to provide 'fast start finance' (FSF) in 2010/11 and 2011/12 in the context of the pledge by developed countries to mobilise USD 30 billion from 2010 to 2012 under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). It is part of a series of studies scrutinising how developed countries are defining, delivering, and reporting FSF. It concludes that:

• The UK has made a substantial effort to mobilise climate finance
• The majority of UK finance is spent by multilateral institutions, in the form of capital contribution
• The UK does not count private finance towards its FSF contribution, but it does count non-grant instruments as well as development assistance
• While the FSF contrubition reflects some new efforts to address climate change, it is unclear that the contribution as a whole can be considered 'new and additional'
• The UK is relatively transparent about its FSF spend, but more can be done
• There is a need to improve access to information in practice.