Mexico proposes $10 bn global fund on climate change

Mexico's President Felipe Calderon has called on the world's leading nations to contribute $10 billion to endow a Global Green Fund charged with financing programmes to combat climate change.

"We want it to become a financial mechanism that mobilises and brings together the different investment efforts dealing with climate change," Calderon said Monday in this central Mexican city of Jiutepec at the beginning of a two-day preparatory session for a forum next month on energy and climate.

For Calderon, whose country is the chief promoter of this multilateral instrument, administration of the Green Fund ought to handled by "an already-created international organisation".

"I think the World Bank is capable of handling it, it has what it takes to establish an administrative agency for the Green Fund," he said.

The basis of this mechanism should be "that everyone contributes, not just rich, developed countries," he said, though he made an exception for the world's poorest nations.

There ought to be a principle of common and individual responsibilities, with industrialised countries benefiting from the fund in an amount less than they put in, while less developed countries receive more than the quota they contribute to the fund, he said.

One requirement this mechanism should have, he said, is a technical agency "for the rapid application of resources" that wouldn't be a permanent source of political debate.

Among other advantages, this new mechanism would be accessible to all and would strengthen multilateralism.

For Calderon, such a fund would oblige nations "to have strict accounting mechanisms" that would lead to better control of greenhouse gases, particularly carbon dioxide.

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