* Green Fund board to meet again in October
* Agrees details of operations, no talk yet of cash
By Alister Doyle
OSLO, Aug 25 (Reuters) – Leaders of a fledgling U.N. green
fund agreed at a first meeting on Saturday to pick a
headquarters this year as part of a plan to oversee billions of
dollars in aid to help developing nations fight global warming.
The three-day meeting in Geneva heard pitches from the six
countries — Germany, Mexico, Namibia, Poland, South Korea and
Switzerland — that want to host the Green Climate Fund, the
main U.N. body due to manage $100 billion in aid from 2020.
“This first meeting was a very productive start,” Ewen
McDonald of Australia, a co-chair of the Fund, said in a
statement at the end of the talks among the 24 board members
working on details of how the fund will operate.
The board aims to select the host country at a next meeting,
set for Oct. 18-20 in South Korea. The choice would then have to
be endorsed by environment ministers at U.N. climate talks in
Doha in late November and early December.
“It is early days,” Kjetil Lund, deputy Norwegian finance
minister and a board member, told Reuters. “We have to get the
right set-up first.”
Developed nations agreed in 2009 to raise climate aid, now
about $10 billion a year, to an annual $100 billion from 2020 to
help developing countries curb greenhouse gas emissions and cope
with floods, droughts, heatwaves and rising sea levels.
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