Talks on 'Green Climate Fund' postponed

Yahoo News 3 Mar 11;

PARIS (AFP) – A first meeting to set down the ground rules of a fund to channel hundreds of billions of dollars to poor countries exposed to climate change has been postponed until the second half of April, a UN official said on Thursday.

Representatives from 40 countries had been scheduled to meet in Mexico City on March 14 and 15 for the maiden meeting of a panel designed to breathe life into the Green Climate Fund (GCF) established last December.

A spokesman for the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) told AFP by phone from Bonn that the meeting had been postponed "until the latter part of April."

In Cancun, Mexico, the 194 parties of the UNFCCC agreed to establish the GCF, which would have a board of 24 members chosen evenly from developed and developing nations.

The task of drawing up the fund's terms of reference has been entrusted to a transitional committee of 25 developing and 15 developed countries.

Important details are at stake, including the scope of a registry to record financial pledges and climate-mitigating action and whether non-governmental groups, the private sector and international organisations should be allowed to take part.

But the first meeting has been hampered by delays among Asian, Latin American and Caribbean countries over who should have a seat on the committee, the spokesman said.

"The others have made up their minds," he said.

The GCF has been one of the scant signs of progress in international climate diplomacy since the stormy Copenhagen Summit of December 2009.

It began as a unspecific promise by rich countries to provide as much as 100 billion dollars a year in climate aid by 2020.

Developing countries see the fund as a test of the sincerity of industrialised countries demanding tighter curbs on carbon pollutions by emerging giants Brazil, China, India and Indonesia.

The Cancun agreement also called for "urgent action" to cap warming to no more than two degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels, and requested a study on strengthening the commitment to 1.5 C (2.7 F).

It agreed on ways forward on fighting deforestation, a leading cause of climate change, and on monitoring nations' climate pledges.

But the talks were blighted over the fate of the Kyoto Protocol, the landmark treaty whose obligations on wealthy countries to cut emissions expires in late 2012.

These issues will be handed to the next senior-most meeting of the UNFCCC, in Durban, South Africa from November 28 to December 9.

Before then, the forum meets in Bangkok, at the level of senior officials, from April 3 to April 8, and in Bonn from June 6-17.