Green Climate Fund designers they have historic task

PRESS RELEASE: UN Climate Chief tells Green Climate Fund designers they have historic task, says progress can encourage new success in Durban read the release on our website: http://unfccc.int/files/press/press_releases_advisories/application/pdf/pr20112904tcgreenfund.pdf

(Mexico City, 29 April 2011) – The Green Climate Fund, a part of last year’s broad international climate agreement in Cancun, Mexico, must become the window into an era of vastly greater financing for climate action in the developing world, the head of the United Nations climate change secretariat said on Friday.

“I am convinced that as governments, industry and investors see that a low-carbon future is not only necessary but sustainable and profitable, the necessary finance will flow faster than many now expect. A well-designed Green Climate Fund will help ensure that this happens sooner rather than later,” said Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

Ms Figueres spoke after attending the first meeting of the Fund’s Transitional Committee in Mexico City, on 28–29 April.

“Every year, nations must work together to build better, more ambitious international responses in the common effort against human-generated climate change. The launch of the Green Climate Fund is one of the significant decisions that nations reached in Cancun, which show that governments can take repeated steps forward, including this year in Durban,” said Ms Figueres.

The Transitional Committee includes experienced and respected individuals from the fields of finance and climate change, from both developed and developing countries. Its task is to propose an effective design for the new fund in time for approval by the next UN Climate Conference in Durban, in December 2011.

The Green Climate Fund’s objective is to dramatically increase the provision of long-term climate financing for developing countries, in the broader context of an agreement by industrialized countries to mobilize USD 100 billion per year by 2020 for that purpose, from a mix of public and private sources.

“To get government and private capital flowing freely on this scale, the Green Climate Fund needs to become a trusted avenue for deploying climate funding to the best effect and it needs to offer a compelling route for private sector capital to engage in bigger climate investments in the developing world, ”said Ms. Figueres.

The Cancun Agreements, reached on 11 December in Cancun, Mexico, at the 2010 UN Climate Change Conference, are a set of significant decisions by the international community to address the long-term challenge of climate change collectively and comprehensively over time and to take concrete action now to speed up the global response.

About the UNFCCC

With 195 Parties, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) has near universal membership and is the parent treaty of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. The Kyoto Protocol has been ratified by 192 of the UNFCCC Parties. Under the Protocol, 37 States, consisting of highly industrialized countries and countries undergoing the process of transition to a market economy, have legally binding emission limitation and reduction commitments. The ultimate objective of both treaties is to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that will prevent dangerous human interference with the climate system.

See also: unfccc.int Follow UNFCCC on Twitter: @UN_ClimateTalks UNFCCC Executive Secretary Christiana Figueres on Twitter: @CFigueres UNFCCC on Facebook: facebook.com/UNClimateTalks

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