The secretariat of the UN Climate Adoption Fund – created to ensure that poor countries have finances available to cope with the increasing environmental impacts of global warming—said that the fund has not received all of an almost US$4 million budget set to cover 2008 and half of 2009. "We need money as soon as possible now, because we cannot even hold a meeting in March," Richard Muyungi, a Tanzanian government official who chairs the Adaptation Fund Board, told Reuters at the UN climate talks in Poznan, Poland.
The fund’s primary source of capital will be a 2% levy on projects in the Clean Development Mechanism — a UN scheme that allows wealthy states to invest in clean energy projects in the developing world to offset their own carbon emissions. However, "estimates say (the fund) will barely reach US$900 million by 2012, but this is not enough in terms of the needs of countries for adaptation, so it’s high time for (governments) to put money in," said Muyungi.
The Adaptation Fund has not yet distributed any cash because the board has spent the past year deciding on legal and technical issues. Governments are trying to determine the final details so that concrete projects can start in 2009. The United Nations has said that by 2015 US$86 billion will be required annually for poor countries to adapt to global warming, and aid groups are calling for a minimum of US$50 billion.
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