Brown professor following the climate money

By Beth Daley, Globe Staff
 
COPENHAGEN - At its core, these climate negotiations are all about the money: How much rich nations will pony up to developing nations to adapt to climate change and jumpstart low-carbon economies.
 
But unlike negotiators fixated on how many billions of dollars will be paid and to whom, a Brown University professor here is determined to find out where it all goes.

J. Timmons Roberts, director of the Center for Environmental Studies, and a group of partners from around the world have spent the past six years developing a public database that will track development money from its award to a final project. He wants to know if the money for a seawall project in Tuvalu means a seawall gets built. Or if funding to Thailand researchers to develop drought-resistant rice plants really gets to them.
 
Perhaps you would think, with the billions of dollars in aid flowing back and forth among the world's nations for generations, there would be a highly evolved system to make sure the money gets where it's supposed to go. Nope. Roberts says there are many reasons why, including the reality that funding can be expensive to track and that some governments do not want it to be tracked. Regardless why, he said, the result is enormous sums of money swallowed up by consultants, middlemen, and corruption long before it gets even part of the distance it needs to go. 
 
"Sometimes, a country doesn't even know it has been awarded aid," he said. Other times, a country promises, but simply never sends the check.
 
While the problem is longstanding, it's about to get worse: No matter what the exact figures are, tens -- and more likely hundreds of billions of dollars -- are going to be flowing among countries in coming decades to deal with climate change. Without some database tracking it all, Roberts says, it runs the risk of failing. Already, aid history is pockmarked with unmet promises: For example, roughly $18 billion was voluntary pledged for climate projects through around 2008 (although it has been ramped up significantly in recent months), but less than a billion has been disbursed.
 
Roberts' project is being supported with $2 million from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. Along with William & Mary College, Brigham Young University, the Washington, D.C., non-profit Development Gateway, and others, Roberts will launch the AidData website in March. The group has spent six years gathering more than 850,000 development activities financed by approximately 70 countries and multilateral institutions from 1946 to the present day. Not all are green projects, but Roberts hopes to give a special focus on climate-related ones as money is promised.