WB sets up fund for climate control

Rwanda and other developing countries now have reasons to laud new international action on climate change after a World Bank vow to create a global treasury for climate control. The bank Tuesday revealed in a press release the creation of a Climate Investments Fund (CIF). “They have to fund all possible actions aimed at freeing the global atmosphere from further dangerous gas emissions,” said the State minister for Environment, Water and Mines, Prof. Munyanganizi Bikoro. Bikoro noted on Thursday that the creation of the CIF is part of the Bali Action Plan, a new global climate change control strategy put in place last December at the UN summit in Indonesia. The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) summit held in the city of Bali tasked the international community to do more in providing necessary assistance. It called for financial resource support and investments to spearhead action on adaptation, and technology cooperation in global climate change negotiations. CIF is said to have been designed to provide interim scaled-up funding to help countries in their efforts to lessen the rise in greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to climate change. Two trust funds are expected to be created under the CIF; they include the Clean Technology Fund meant to provide new large-scale financial resources to invest in projects and programmes. The second is the Strategic Climate Fund which will be broader and more flexible in scope and will serve as an overarching fund for various programmes to test innovative approaches to climate change. The WB President, Robert B. Zoellick, was quoted in a release as saying, “We think the CIF will have a significant impact in generating even more financing for climate action.” The funds, to be disbursed as grants or as risk mitigation instruments, will be administered through the Multilateral Development Banks (MDB) and the WB Group. Developing countries are anticipated to have an equal voice in the governance structures of the funds, and decisions on their use will be made by consensus. An annual Partnership Forum will be held to provide a venue for talks on the strategic directions, results, and impact of the CIF. The Partnership Forum is designed to be a broad-based meeting of stakeholders, including donor and recipient countries, MDBs, the United Nations and its related agencies. Ends

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WB sets up fund for climate control