AFP: UN panel to mobilize climate change funding

UNITED NATIONS — UN chief Ban Ki-moon set up a high-level advisory panel Friday to mobilize funding to help developing nations battle climate change.

The panel, to be led by Britain's Prime Minister Gordon Brown and his Ethiopian counterpart Meles Zenawi, aimed "to mobilize the resources for climate change pledged at the recent climate change conference in Copenhagen," Ban told reporters.

The group, evenly balanced between developed and developing nations, "will develop practical proposals to significantly scale up long-term (public and private) financing for mitigation and adaptation strategies in developing countries," he added.

The UN boss said the group would specifically seek to marshal new and innovative resources to reach a 100-billion-dollar target by 2020 to fund "adaptation, mitigation, technology development and transfer, and capacity building in developing countries, with priority for the most vulnerable."

The panel was set to include heads of state and government, top officials from ministries and central banks as well as experts on public finance, development and related issues.

Ban said the composition of the panel would be announced shortly and revealed that he planned to ask Guyana's President Bharrat Jagdeo and Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg to join.

The secretary-general, who was linked by video conference with Brown and Meles, said he expected the panel to deliver a preliminary report at the May-June meeting of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which provides a planetary arena for tackling climate change.

"Finance for adaptation and mitigation and transfer of technology are of central significance for developing countries in general and the poor and vulnerable countries in particular," the Ethiopian premier said from Addis Ababa.

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