Cash begins trickling out of Green Climate Fund
Lambasted by Donald Trump and much criticised from all sides, the seemingly friendless Green Climate Fund has begun doling out money.
Five years after its inaugural meeting, the fund has almost $10 billion of donations pledged but only a few million dollars have reached climate projects.
With its next board meeting scheduled for the 5-6 July, the UN-backed conduit for climate finance announced a series of payouts in May and June totalling $5.2m. A press release said the fund was scaling up disbursements.
On Friday, the Maldives received the first $3m of $23.6m committed to build better water infrastructure in the atoll nation, which is threatened by it lack of natural reservoirs, rising seas and saltwater intrusion.
Achim Steiner, head of the UN Development Programme, which will manage the project, said: “We are delighted that the Green Climate Fund’s first disbursement to UNDP will help realise this exciting project, which will see almost a third of the population of the Maldives becoming freshwater self-sufficient over the next five years.”
Grant Ellis / World Bank