29 April 2011
South African National Planning Minister Trevor Manuel has been elected as one of three co-chairman of an international committee set up to design the US$100-billion Green Climate Fund, which was set up after the United Nations’ climate summit in Cancun, Mexico in December.
The Green Climate Fund, which will be financed through carbon pricing, will be used to mitigate deforestation and open up new agricultural land in Africa, among other things.
Announcing his appointment to journalists in Cape Town on Friday, Manuel said his appointment to the Transitional Committee for the design of the Green Climate Change Fund happened in his absence in Mexico on Thursday night.
He joins two other co-chairs, Mexican Minister of Finance and Public Credit Ernesto Cordero Arroyo, and Kjetil Lund of Norway’s ministry of finance.
He said that the Transitional Committee comprised 40 United Nations representatives and reported to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.
The committee had three tasks, which were to design the “governance arrangements of a Green Climate Fund, mobilizing resources for this fund and setting out the modalities of spending these resources”.
Manuel said that the committee would have to finish its obligations before the 17th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP17), which takes place in Durban from 28 November to 9 December.
The committee was likely to have at least four meetings leading to the COP 17 meeting.
Manuel said that climate change issues were not for scientists alone, and more debate was needed around the matter in South Africa.
Source: BuaNews
