Many voices, domestic and international, have called upon the United States and other industrialized countries to increase foreign assistance to lower- and middle-income countries to address climate change. Proponents maintain that such assistance could help promote climate-friendly and high-growth economic development in these countries, while simultaneously protecting the more vulnerable nations from the effects of a changing climate. For their part, most, if not all, lower-income countries have stated that their success at combating climate change depends critically on receipt of international financial support. They argue that mitigating climate change pollutants, adapting to the effects of climate change, and building climate resilience into their development agendas incur costs above and beyond their normal economic growth trajectories. These costs are particularly challenging to nations that have scant resources compared to industrialized countries, do not recognize themselves as the historical sources of climate pollution, and consider alleviating poverty as their first priority. The Green Climate Fund (GCF) is an international financial institution connected to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The GCF was proposed by Parties to the UNFCCC during the 2009 Conference of Parties (COP) in Copenhagen, Denmark, and its design was agreed to during the 2011 COP in Durban, South Africa. The fund aims to assist developing countries in their efforts to combat climate change through the provision of grants and other concessional financing for mitigation and adaptation projects, programs, policies, and activities. The GCF is capitalized by contributions from donor countries and other sources, potentially including innovative mechanisms and the private sector. The GCF currently complements many of the existing multilateral climate change funds (e.g., the Global Environment Facility, the Climate Investment Funds, and the Adaptation Fund); however, as the official financial mechanism of the UNFCCC, some Parties believe that it may eventually replace or subsume the other funds. Expectations by many countries, specifically developing countries, are that the GCF becomes very large (i.e., in the range of several tens of billions to over $100 billion annually) and serves as the predominant institution for climate change assistance in the developing world. These countries believe that the agreement to establish the GCF has been a key success in the recent international negotiations. But others caution that ambitious steps need to be taken to ensure that the fund is operated correctly in order to achieve an adequate buy-in by donor countries of its effectiveness and by recipient countries of its legitimacy. The GCF was made operational in the summer of 2014. Parties called for an immediate capitalization of between $10 billion and $15 billion over the course of the first year. Initial funding came from Germany, France, and a dozen other countries who pledged approximately $2.3 billion during the United Nations Climate Summit in September 2014. Further pledges brought the total to approximately $10 billion by the close of 2014. The Obama Administration announced a pledge of $3 billion over four years during the G-20 meetings in Australia on November 15, 2014. The Administration's FY2016 budget requested $500 million for the fund. Notwithstanding these financial pledges, details remain to be worked out. While the governing board, a host city, and the basic design of the fund have been agreed to by Parties, many structural aspects have yet to be clarified, some involving long-standing and contentious debate. They include what role the GCF would play in providing sustained finance at adequate levels; how it would fit into the existing development assistance and climate financing architecture; whether sources beyond public funding would successfully contribute to it; and how it would allocate and deliver assistance efficiently and effectively to developing countries. The U.S. Congress—through its role in authorizations, appropriations, and oversight—would have significant input on U.S. participation in the fund, including whether and when to participate in the fund; whether and how much to contribute to the fund, and with what source or sources of finance; whether fund contributions would carry specific guidance in distribution and use; how contributions to the fund would relate to other U.S. bilateral, multilateral, and private sector climate change assistance; and whether and when to consent to negotiated treaty obligations, if submitted. The UNFCCC was the first formal international agreement to acknowledge and address human-driven climate change. The U.S. Senate provided its advice and consent to the Convention's ratification in 1992, the same year it was concluded. For the United States, the UNFCCC entered into force in 1994. As of November 2014, 196 governments are Parties. As a framework convention, the UNFCCC provides a structure for international consideration of climate change but does not contain detailed obligations for achieving particular climate-related objectives in each Party's territory. It recognizes that climate change is a "common concern to humankind," and, accordingly, requires parties to (1) gather and share information on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, national policies, and best practices; (2) launch national strategies for addressing GHG emissions and adapting to expected impacts; and (3) cooperate in preparing for the impacts of climate change. The UNFCCC did not set binding targets for GHG emissions; however, it did commit the higher-income Parties (i.e., those listed in Annex II of the Convention) to provide unspecified amounts of financial assistance to help lower-income countries meet the broad, qualitative obligations common to all Parties. As the treaty entered into force and the UNFCCC Conference of the Parties (COP) met for the first time in 1995, the Parties agreed that achieving the objective of the UNFCCC would require new and stronger GHG commitments. As a first step toward meeting this objective, the 1997 Kyoto Protocol was drafted and entered into force with a stated aim to reduce the net GHG emissions of industrialized country Parties (Annex I Parties) to 5.2% below 1990 levels in the period of 2008 to 2012. The United States signed the Kyoto Protocol in December 1997. However, at the time, opposition in Congress was strong. The Kyoto Protocol was not submitted to the Senate by President Bill Clinton or by his successor, President George W. Bush. Thus, the United States is not a Party to the Protocol. In 2007, UNFCCC Parties reconvened negotiations for further commitments beyond the Kyoto Protocol, and agreed to negotiate a suite of agreements that included new GHG mitigation targets for Annex I Parties, "nationally appropriate mitigation actions" for non-Annex I Parties, and other commitments for the post-2012 period. The mandates (referred to as the Bali Action Plan) specified that the products of negotiation should be ready by the end of 2009. Due perhaps to high expectations, as well as continued divergence among Parties on some key issues, the 2009 COP in Copenhagen, Denmark, did not produce a legally binding treaty, but a short, non-legally binding political document called the Copenhagen Accord. The Copenhagen Accord was a policy document drafted by leaders of about two dozen countries in the final hours of the 2009 COP, and subsequently acknowledged by 114 countries. The Accord sat in sharp contrast to the Kyoto Protocol, as its bottom-up and nationally appropriate model differed greatly from the top-down implementation of the Protocol. Provisions in the Accord included voluntary GHG mitigation efforts by all Parties, adaptation and forestry actions, technology transfer mechanisms, and transparency and reporting standards, as well as financial provisions by developed country Parties. The Accord also proposed the "Green Climate Fund" (GCF) to serve as the operating entity of the financial mechanism of the Convention. Many of the elements of the Copenhagen Accord, the Bali Action Plan, and the UNFCCC were adopted officially at the 2010 COP in Cancun, which yielded several decisions collectively called the Cancun Agreements. The establishment of the GCF—as well as some other financial arrangements mentioned in the Copenhagen Accord—was a central aspect of the negotiations, and was entered into the negotiating text of the UNFCCC's Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-term Cooperative Action under the Convention (AWG-LCA). Climate finance provisions in the Cancun negotiating text (1/CP.16) included the following: Fast Start Financing. The agreement put forth a collective commitment by developed country Parties (not specified in the text) to provide new and additional resources approaching $30 billion for the period 2010–2012 to address the needs of developing countries (the allocation, or "burden-sharing," among countries was not specified in the text) (1/CP.16§95). 2020 Pledge. The agreement took note of the pledge by developed country Parties (not specified in the text) to achieve a goal of mobilizing jointly $100 billion per year by 2020 to address the needs of developing countries (the allocation, or "burden-sharing," among countries was not specified in the text) (1/CP.16§98). Sources. The agreement outlined that the pledged assistance was to be scaled-up, new and additional, predicable and adequate, and that it may come from a wide variety of sources, including public and private, bilateral, multilateral, and alternative (1/CP.16§§97, 99). Balanced Package. The agreement recognized that the financial pledges were offered in the context of continued negotiations toward a balanced package of commitments by all Parties that would include, among other items, meaningful actions on mitigation and transparency (1/CP.16§98). Green Climate Fund. The agreement opened the way for the establishment of the GCF, to be designated as an operating entity of the financial mechanism of the UNFCCC, accountable to and under the guidance of the COP, to support projects, programs, policies, and other activities in developing country Parties (1/CP.16§102). Transitional Committee.