New climate finance website launched by Dutch environment minister
Press release - Ministry of Environment and Spatial Planning, Netherlands
As of today, anyone visiting www.faststartfinance.org can track billions of dollars in climate finance. Minister Tineke Huizinga of the Environment and Spatial Planning Ministry launched the site during the Geneva dialogue on Climate Financing. She did so on behalf of Colombia, Costa Rica, Denmark, Germany, Indonesia, Marshall Islands, Mexico, Norway, the United Kingdom and Vietnam, who actively support this initiative.
The site provides transparency about the origin, amount, and use of funds going to developing countries to support action to fight climate change. At the climate summit in Copenhagen developed countries pledged to provide developing countries with fast start finance approaching 30 billion dollars for climate policy during the period 2010-2012.
Transparency about the delivery of this pledge will be crucial in the climate negotiations, which will take place in November in the Mexican city of Cancun. Christiana Figueres the Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) has stated " Clarity on the short-term funding and its allocation is one of the central keys that will unlock the doors for progress at Cancún”. UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon has called for “Clear evidence…before Cancun that fast start funds have started to flow in 2010".
Visitors to www.faststartfinance.org can click on to donor and recipient countries on a map of the world and gain access to detailed information about climate projects. The website will be serviced by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in close consultation with World Bank and the United Nations Enviroment Programme (UNEP) and other UN agencies, including the UNFCCC secretariat.
During her presentation of the website in Geneva, Minister Huizinga strongly called on other countries to publish information about their climate finance on the website. The organizers hope that the website will provide as much transparency as possible about climate finance before the climate Conference of the Parties (COP) in Cancun in late November.
For further inquiries, please contact Jacek Magala, press officer of the Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning and the Environment, jacek.magala@minvrom.nl, cell phone +31615017519.