Financial sector to help mobilize $200 billion to fight climate change in developing countries

UN,  23 September 2014 – Governments, investors and financial institutions today pledged to mobilize $200 billion by the end of next year for low-carbon programmes in developing countries, giving a significant boost to the United Nations goal of reaching $100 billion annually by 2020.

“This will serve as a catalyst in finalizing a universal and meaningful agreement at Paris on climate change in 2015,” Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said as he hosted the largest ever summit of world leaders on climate change at UN Headquarters in New York to prepare the ground for a global accord at a summit in the French capital in December next year.

Today’s agreement combines public and private financing, including pledges by donor and developing countries to capitalize the Green Climate Fund aimed at helping developing countries shoulder the burden of slashing emissions.

“The Summit has created a platform for new coalitions and has brought leaders from both public and private sectors across the globe to not only recognize climate risks, but to agree to work together,” Mr. Ban said of today’s gathering.

• The private sector announcements were made by an unprecedented coalition of financial institutions, pension funds, insurance companies, development banks and commercial banks which had never previously acted together on climate change at such a large scale.

The Summit also marked a major advance in efforts by Governments and businesses to set a price on greenhouse gas emissions, a step that offers investors and consumers an accurate reflection of the true cost of goods and services. More than 50 countries and 500 companies endorsed the need for developing mechanisms that would adequately reflect the true costs relating to pollution and emissions.

In a major departure from the climate negotiations and previous climate summits, the business community and civil society are playing a major role. There were 181 representatives from the business and investment community, including 90 chief executive officers. There were 52 business and investors from developing countries. In addition, there were dozens of civil society representatives. 
[un.org]
23/9/14
--
-

• UN summit test for new climate fund. (Donors yet to stump up to pay for assistance to developing countries)

• Some 22 million displaced by natural disasters in 2013, UN-backed report reveals 

• According to the report, both wealthy and poorer countries are affected, although developing countries bear the brunt, accounting for more than 85 per cent of displacement....

• From Paris to New York, people rally against climate change

• WHO Warns of Climate Change Dangers, Calls for Stronger Actions

• Climate Change: The World, ‘It Turned Out Right’

  ---

  • Δυσαρέσκεια Μπαν Κι Μουν για την Απουσία της Μέρκελ Από τη Σύνοδο Κορυφής για το Κλίμα

  • Klimaschutz.....Kanzlerin Merkel schwänzt den Gipfel....

UN summit test for new climate fund. (Donors yet to stump up to pay for assistance to developing countries)

A global fund created to spearhead climate change financing faces a key test at a UN summit this week when it looks to the leaders of the industrialized world to stump up billions of dollars to fill its underflowing coffers.

For the South Korea-based Green Climate Fund, the climate summit in New York on Tuesday is an opportunity for the developed world to demonstrate its financial commitment to securing a new, legally binding global climate deal with poorer countries in 2015.

The fund was born out of the UN climate summit in Copenhagen in 2009, when developed countries made a political commitment to mobilize $100 billion annually for developing countries by 2020.

So far only Germany has come up with a substantial commitment to the GCF, pledging around $1 billion in July.

"We expect at the summit other countries to come forward and show they are leading the way in contributing to the fund," said GCF executive director Hela Cheikhrouhou.

"Early pledges, like Germany or those who pledge in New York, are incredibly important for trust-building," Cheikhrouhou told AFP in an interview in Incheon.

The GCF, which was formally established in 2010, has had a slow gestation period, and it took 3-1/2 years to reach a working consensus on what it should do and how it should go about it.

"That's where people got impatient," Cheikhrouhou acknowledged.

"It took a long time to agree on the foundational policies and operational guidelines."

The fund's board is composed of 24 members, with equal representation from developing and developed countries.

Cheikhrouhou said debate had been "stormy" at times, but argued this was inevitable with an institution being built from scratch and entrusted with such a pivotal role.

The GCF was set up to channel funding from wealthy to poorer nations, helping them to shift their development pathways towards a greener track and shore up defenses against climate peril.

"We have to start this paradigm shift now," Cheikhrouhou said. "The more we delay action, the harder and more expensive it will be in the future."

The fund currently has around $55 million in its coffers, while Christiana Figueres, the head of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), has called for an initial capitalization of $10 billion by the end of the year.

Confidence in the GCF is seen as critical for the UNFCCC's conference in Lima, Peru in December, which aims at clearing the way to a global pact on climate change a year later in Paris.

"Essentially, the fund should be proof that help will be on the way if you agree to an agreement," Cheikhrouhou said.
Sources: AFP - globaltimes.cn
21/9/14
--
-
Related:

• Some 22 million displaced by natural disasters in 2013, UN-backed report reveals 

• According to the report, both wealthy and poorer countries are affected, although developing countries bear the brunt, accounting for more than 85 per cent of displacement....

• From Paris to New York, people rally against climate change

• WHO Warns of Climate Change Dangers, Calls for Stronger Actions

• Climate Change: The World, ‘It Turned Out Right’

From Paris to New York, people rally against climate change

World leaders including UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon were on Sunday set to join farmers, fishermen, children and others in demonstrations across the globe to demand action on climate change.

In New York, organisers were expecting some 100,000 to join the People’s Climate March ahead of Tuesday's UN summit, which will bring together 120 world leaders to discuss reducing carbon emissions that threaten the environment.

“You can’t fight climate change sitting on your couch and holding your breath,” said Jamie Henn, a spokesman for 350.org, which organized the New York event with more than a dozen other environmental, labor and social justice groups.

Sunday’s global rally - which is also being held in Berlin, London, Paris, Rio and Melbourne - is aimed at demanding changes that will lead to a world economy run entirely on clean energy.

The UN climate summit will focus on talks towards a pact 200 nations are working on that would rein in the rising greenhouse gas emissions. Negotiators aim to complete that deal in late 2015.

In Paris, activists said the mobilisation would act as a reminder for President François Hollande and his government of the huge responsibility they will shoulder when France hosts the Climate Conference in 2015.

“The climate crisis is already upon us and feeds the economic crisis. This is a silent tragedy, which kills tens of thousands of people every year”, said environmental activist and political figure Nicolas Hulot, who is joining the march.

Organisers have billed the event as the largest gathering focused on climate change since 2009, when tens of thousands of people gathered in Copenhagen in a sometime raucous demonstration that resulted in the detention of 2,000 protesters.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP, REUTERS)
[france24.com]
21/9/14