Climate Fund draft completed by UN

A draft of the ‘Green Climate Fund’, designed to help developing countries in their fight against climate change has been completed according to Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change.

The Fund is designed to provide up to $100 billion a year by 2020 to developing countries, but will have to be approved by the negotiators at the Durban Conference of the Parties in December to be able to move forward.

"The Committee ended its work by submitting for consideration and approval in Durban both a draft instrument for the Green Climate Fund and recommendations on transitional arrangements to get it launched quickly," Ms. Figueres said. "The submissions… include a strong signal to engage the private sector and a solid basis to develop country-driven operations through direct access to funds. Once approved in Durban, they would allow the fund to grow quite quickly, especially as the financial environment improves, and the way would be open for a fairly rapid set-up of the fund in 2012 and full initial operations in 2013,"

The fund has generated heated discussions with the United States and Saudi Arabia being accused of hampering the process as they withdrew their support for the scheme during the negotiations. Other nations have called for a swift scaling up of the fund, which they say will take much time to reach the targeted $100 billion per annum figure. In a meeting of 100 of the worlds poorest countries recently, they argued that rather than going through the World Bank or other third party, the fund should be accessible to developing nations directly.