Mexico: 'Green fund' better than carbon credits
By Mark Stevenson | Associated Press in Google News | June 23, 2009
MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexican President Felipe Calderon made a push Monday for his proposal for a $10 billion "green fund" as a more efficient way to fight climate change than carbon credits.
Calderon spoke at the opening of the latest session of the Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate, which brings together representatives of 19 countries and the European Union that together account for 80 percent of the world's greenhouse gas emissions.
"The current carbon credits would not have to disappear, but they are not an efficient mechanism," Calderon said, noting that the credits market "has to match an industry that wants to pollute with another" that has projects to compensate or reduce gas emissions.
The two-day meeting opened near the city of Cuernavaca. It is the third in a series of talks called for by President Barack Obama that will culminate with a June summit in Italy.
The goal is to help broker a replacement for the expiring Kyoto Protocol, ahead of a United Nations conference in Copenhagen next December on a new international treaty for dealing with global warming.
Calderon said the green fund could be administered by the World Bank or some other multilateral agency.
It would be funded by contributions from all nations — and open to finance projects from all nations — as opposed to largely private-sector carbon credit market.
"It will have a framework of greater multilateral participation, which will result in a more equitable and efficient distribution of funds," Calderon said.
He said the idea "does not seek, as has been traditional, that the funds to fight climate change ... come from the same old donors as an act of charity or a handout given to developing countries."
"It is time to move on from mutual reproaches, to a shared scheme of responsibility," Calderon said.
The amount each country would donate to the fund would be open to negotiation, but rich countries would be expected to give more.
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