Climate Fund Board must get going: EU

Newslink:  http://www.timeslive.co.za/local/2011/11/30/climate-fund-board-must-get-going-eu

The EU wants the Green Climate Fund board to start working as soon as next year, a union representative said on Wednesday.

"In the context of a satisfactory outcome on the green climate fund as well as the overall package from Durban, we want to see the board start as early as 2012," said the chief climate negotiator for the EU and Poland Tomasz Chruszczow.

He was addressing the media on the Cop17 climate talks taking place in Durban.

Countries agreed to form the fund during climate change talks in Cancun, Mexico, and a transitional committee was formed.

The next step would be the composition of a board to run the fund, which is meant to help developing countries adapt to climate change.

Chruszczow said the report compiled by the fund's transitional committee would be tabled and discussed on Wednesday afternoon.

"We believe that the committee involving high level experts who have real understanding and knowledge of how to make the fund a success, has proved to be a valuable one and enable a real progress since Cancun," he said.

The EU believed the fund would play a huge role in furthering mitigation and adaptation in developing countries.

It would also help with issues such as technology co-operation and transfer.

He said the EU welcomed the report compiled by the transitional committee, saying that it was "inevitably a compromise".

"There are probably points that we and others would have preferred to see handled differently. However we believe that it should be possible to agree the draft as it stands."

It would be counter-productive to undertake further technical discussions on the instrument, he said