UN names panel to finance climate change technology

New York, March 5 : A United Nations 19-member, high-level advisory group tasked with raising funds to help developing countries counter climate change with modern technology, was announced Thursday.

The climate change financing group is co-chaired by British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, who will work with Guyana President Bharrat Jagden and Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg.

The other members include Larry Summers, White House economic adviser; George Soros, chairman of Soros Fund Management; Caio Koch-Weser, vice chairman of Deutsche Bank Group; Soumaila Cisse, president of the commission of the West African Monetary Union; and Tharman Shanmugaratman, Singapore finance minister.

The UN climate change summit in Copenhagen agreed to push for financing of technology to combat global warming, even though it failed to produce a binding agreement as the successor to the Kyoto Protocol, which will expire in 2012.

The UN has called for USD 100 billion a year by 2050 to fund activities related to

mitigation and adaption, starting immediately with at least USD 10 billion a year.