UNITED NATIONS, November 20 (Sputnik) — Thirty countries have pledged $9.4 billion for the Green Climate Fund, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Thursday as he called for more contributions from both developed and developing countries before the 21st UN Climate Change Conference in 2015.
The UN Secretary-General said in a statement he "welcomes the pledges of more than $9.4 billion made by Governments towards the initial capitalization of the Green Climate Funds at the Berlin Pledging Conference".
The fund was to hold at least $10 billion by the end of 2014. Ban said these pledges "go far" to kick-start the project. He cited other significant climate change deals, such as the US-China joint announcement on combating climate change that came at the end of last week's meeting between US President Barack Obama and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping. More commitments were made at the past G20 summit in Brisbane and the UN climate summit on September 23.
"These developments demonstrate that Governments increasingly understand both the benefits derived from climate action and the growing risks of delay. It also provides much needed public finance which is key to unlocking investments at a much larger scale from private sources," Ban noted.
The UN chief underscored the importance of additional contributions that he said would secure "a meaningful, universal climate agreement in Paris in 2015".
The United Nations are going to hold another climate change conference in Lima, Peru on December 1-12. The meeting is considered to be an important stepping stone toward crunch talks in Paris in 2015. The Climate Fund, which is a mechanism to transfer money from the developed countries to the emerging economies, will be one of the main topics on the agenda of the Lima summit.
