UN taps prime ministers to seek new climate money
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UNITED NATIONS — The U.N. chief tapped the prime ministers of Britain and Ethiopia on Friday to lead the hunt for hundreds of billions of dollars that nations pledged to contribute this decade for dealing with climate change.
The announcement is an attempt to fulfill a key part of the nonbinding Copenhagen Accord aimed at directing money from rich nations to poorer nations facing rising sea levels, melting glaciers and other effects of climate change.
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Friday named British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi as co-chairs of a new high-level U.N. advisory group on climate changing financing.
Ban said the group will look at "how to jump start" efforts to collect the tens of billions of dollars a year pledged at the Copenhagen climate conference in December.
The money is meant to help developing nations cope with the Earth's warming that scientists blame on an atmospheric buildup of heat-trapping carbon emissions mainly from fossil-fuel burning.
He said they would seek the money from both governments and private donors.
Richer nations promised to finance a $10 billion-a-year, three-year program, starting immediately, to fund poorer nations' projects to deal with drought and other climate-change impacts, and to develop clean energy. Of that, European Union leaders have pledged to pay $10.5 billion over the next three years.