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Tuesday, July 29, 2025

Environment groups: Get Climate Change Fund up and running

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Non-gov­ern­ment en­vi­ron­ment groups have called on coun­tries at­tend­ing the UN Cli­mate Change Con­fer­ence in South Africa to reach con­sen­sus on op­er­a­tional­is­ing the Green Cli­mate Change Fund that will chan­nel US$100 bil­lion a year in aid to de­vel­op­ing na­tions. Coun­tries, in­clud­ing the Unit­ed States, Sau­di Ara­bia, Egypt and Venezuela, have raised con­cerns about the fund, in­clud­ing its le­gal per­son­al­i­ty, na­tion­al des­ig­nat­ed au­thor­i­ties and the role of the pri­vate sec­tor. "We need to see par­ties adopt­ing the in­stru­ment on the Green Cli­mate Change Fund," Kel­ly Dent from Ox­fam said yes­ter­day. "We need to see the fund up and run­ning, we need to see mon­ey from rich coun­tries in the fund and to see cli­mate ac­tion on the ground," Il­lana Solomon from Ac­tion Aid, USA said the con­cerns of the coun­tries were re­al and ad­di­tion­al de­ci­sions would have to be made on the fund.

Al­though many coun­tries are fac­ing eco­nom­ic chal­lenges, Solomon said "rich coun­tries can af­ford to the raise the funds they have promised." The vast ma­jor­i­ty of par­ties at the cli­mate change con­fer­ence, in­clud­ing the Eu­ro­pean Union (EU), Al­liance of Small Is­land States (AO­SIS) and less de­vel­oped coun­tries sup­port the Fund's gov­ern­ing in­stru­ment. Lead­ers of 16 en­vi­ron­men­tal groups have al­so writ­ten to US Sec­re­tary of State Hillary Rod­ham Clin­ton, crit­i­cis­ing the ad­min­is­tra­tion's ne­go­ti­at­ing stance in Dur­ban and said it risks up­end­ing the crit­i­cal step of launch­ing the Green Cli­mate Fund.

They said agree­ment to es­tab­lish the Fund was among the most im­por­tant achieve­ments of the UN Cli­mate Change con­fer­ence in Can­cun last year. "Con­crete steps to­wards get­ting the Fund up and run­ning, par­tic­u­lar­ly agree­ment on the Fund's gov­ern­ing in­stru­ment, board, and tran­si­tion­al arrange­ments, are es­sen­tial to the over­all suc­cess of Dur­ban and to progress on in­ter­na­tion­al cli­mate ac­tion," the groups wrote.


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