Dipak Dasgupta, Alternate Director (India), Green Climate Fund Board and Chair, Investment Committee, said today that the $100-billion Green Climate Fund will soon become operational in India.
What is the Green Climate Fund(GCF)?
The Green Climate Fund (GCF) aims ‘to make a significant and ambitious contribution to the global efforts towards attaining the goals set by the international community to combat climate change.’
It was formally established by a UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) decision in Durban, South Africa in December 2011.
The groundwork for GCF was laid in the earlier, non-binding ‘Copenhagen Accord’ of 2009.
Objective of GCF:
The objective of the GCF is to raise $100 billion per year in climate financing by 2020. The GCF will support projects, programmes, policies and other activities in developing country Parties.
However, disputes remain as to whether the funding target will be based on public sources, or whether leveraged private finance will be counted towards the total. Only a fraction of this sum has been pledged so far, mostly to cover start-up costs.
It will be headquartered in Songdo (Incheon), South Korea and will have an independent GCF secretariat. It will have a board comprising 24-members called the GCF Board, composed of equal number of members from developing and developed countries.
Access to fund
Mr Dasgupta clarified that the fund would be made available to organisations such as NABARD that made development investment decisions and NGOs might not qualify for receiving the money as GCF is not development aid money.