Swiss give $100 million to Green Climate Fund

Typhoon Hariyan, central Philippines (November 2013): Financing from the Green Climate Fund is intended to help vulnerable countries reduce their exposure to climate change via detailed adaptation plans Keystone

The Swiss government has agreed to contribute $100 million (CHF95 million) towards the Green Climate Fund (GCF)External link set up to support developing nations deal with rising seas, higher temperatures and extreme weather events.

The money will be paid out over three years from 2015, allowing the GCF, which is in its start-up phase, to begin operations, the foreign ministry said in a statement on Friday.

The GCF money will help vulnerable developing countries adapt to the effects of climate change. It will also be used to help those countries develop clean energy sources that reduce the use of greenhouse gas-emitting coal, oil and gas.

At a conference in Berlin in November, donor nations promised $9.3 billion in aid for the climate fund.

The GCF was conceived during the 2010 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Cancun. It is a part of a broader UN deal, due to be agreed in Paris in late 2015, to limit rising temperatures.

The fund has a non-permanent board of 24 members, with equal representation from developed and developing countries, and an independent secretariat based in Songdo, South Korea.

Switzerland, which lost out to South Korea to host the GCF in Geneva, has shared a seat on the board with Russia since 2012, enabling it to exercise influence on the fund’s structure and allocation of financing.