Green Climate Fund donors meet in Berlin

A donors' meeting in the German capital, Berlin, on Thursday hoped to gather pledges to the tune of billions of dollars for a fund aimed at helping developing countries invest in clean energy and prepare for negative consequences of global warming.

UN climate chief Christiana Figueres has called for donors to contribute at least $10 billion (7.97 billion euros) to the so-called Green Climate Fund (GCF) by the end of the year.

So far, two-thirds of this amount have been pledged, and Thursday's conference hopes to bring the sum above $9 billion.

The 22 countries at the Berlin meeting will have the chance "to show leadership in tackling one of the greatest threats to humankind," Hela Cheikhrouhou, the GCF's executive director, said.

The United States has already pledged $3 billion, Japan $1.5 billion, Germany and France $1 billion each and Sweden over $500 million. Switzerland, South Korea, the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Mexico, Luxembourg and the Czech Republic have also promised smaller amounts.

Several EU countries and Canada have yet to make any pledges, and Australia has ruled out giving any money at all.

The South Korea-based fund is seen as a preliminary step toward the goal set at the Copenhagen UN climate summit in 2009, which envisaged wealthy countries putting $100 billion a year toward broad-based measures to combat climate change at a global level.

Growing threat

The meeting comes as climate experts increasingly call for urgent action on global warming. The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned this month that the Earth could experience an increase of at least four degrees Celsius (7.2 degrees Fahrenheit) in the foreseeable future if greenhouse gas emissions continue at current rates.

Such a temperature increase would result in melting ice caps, more extreme weather events such as hurricanes, droughts and flooding, the loss of habitats and species, and an elevated threat of conflict for resources.

In the light of such predictions, two of the world's top polluters, the United States and China, agreed earlier this month to drastically raise their targets for curbing emissions.

The 28-nation European Union, which produces the third-largest amount of greenhouse gases, has pledged to cut its emissions by at least 40 percent by 2030 from 1990 levels.

Leaders of the world's top 20 economies meeting in Australia last weekend urged "strong and effective action" on climate change, including by financing the GCF.

tj/kms (AFP, epd)