South Korea pledges $40 million to Green Climate Fund

Ed King in Responding to Climate Change: South Korea will set aside US$40 million to ensure developing countries have the capacity to use the UN-backed Green Climate Fund. Kyung-Ho Choo, South Korea’s vice minister of strategy and finance, made the announcement at UN long-term finance talks that started today in Incheon.

Ensuring developing countries can access the GCF is viewed as critical if the flagship project is to effectively channel funds from the global north to south. Currently it is unclear what guarantees or commitments the fund will need from countries, or what safeguards private investors will require.

Choo also called on UN envoys to take ‘immediate action’ on clarifying long term finance pledges to ensure the fund can start operating by the end of 2014. “In order for the GCF to meet such expectation, and to address climate change swiftly and effectively, we should agree on the long term finance issues quickly,” he said.

The Korean city of Songdo will host the GCF, which is part of a wider UN goal to generate US$100 billion for low carbon investment by 2020. Governments agreed to set up the GCF in 2010, but weak economic growth and a lack of confidence in the fund’s structures have undermined fundraising efforts....

Central Songdo, South Korea, shot by JNicol, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license