Committee designing UN-backed green climate fund reports good progress

The transitional committee tasked with designing a new fund to mobilize resources to help developing countries mitigate the impact of global warming under the United Nations climate change convention today reported “solid progress” after a three-day meeting in Geneva.

The Green Climate Fund is one of several significant decisions that countries reached at the meeting of parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Cancún, Mexico, last year.

“The Transitional Committee of the Fund is now fully on track to conclude the design of the Fund for the approval by UNFCCC’s Conference of the Parties in Durban (South Africa),” said Christiana Figueres, the Convention’s Executive Secretary.

“Clearly, there is ambition on the part of governments to create a fund that will reach a scale that is sufficient to put the economic development of their countries onto a low-carbon and climate-resilient path,” said Ms. Figueres, speaking from Bonn, Germany.

She said that governments also wanted the fund to be country-driven and integrated into national development planning processes.

“And they are keen for Green Climate Fund resources to be long-term to allow for the economic transformation necessary to address climate change,” she added.

The fund is intended to be central tool to finance climate change action, both adaptation and mitigation, in developing countries.

In Cancún, governments tasked the Transitional Committee with designing the operational aspects of the fund, to be presented to the UNFCCC during the 28 November-9 December meeting in Durban, where it will be made operational.

The fund will be governed by a 24-member board of directors with equal representation from both developing and developed countries.