Today, the German Cabinet decided that Germany would express its interest in hosting the Green Climate Fund (GCF). The place at which the Fund's headquarters would be established is the Federal City of Bonn. The GCF provides funding to developing countries to help them make their economies climate-friendly and adapt to unavoidable consequences of climate change.
Dr. Norbert Röttgen, German Federal Minister for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety, highlighted the Fund's special importance: "The Green Climate Fund will become a central new element in the international architecture for climate finance. We consider it crucial that the Fund be able to take up its work as soon as possible in an environment that facilitates effective and efficient activities. Bonn is an excellent site for this."
Dirk Niebel, Federal Minister for Economic Cooperation and Development, emphasised: "Germany is the world's second largest provider of climate finance. Both our substantial financial commitments for national and international climate protection and our work on related issues are evidence that we are a responsible and reliable partner. Bonn offers an international environment and would give the GCF a chance to network with many environment- and climate-related organisations that are already established there. This would be ideal conditions for the Fund's work."
The Fund was created at the 2010 climate conference in Cancún and was made operational at the Durban climate conference in December 2011. It will deliver a substantial portion of global climate finance, which is to reach an annual 100 billion US dollars by 2020.
By expressing its interest in hosting the fund, an endeavour pursued jointly by Dr. Norbert Röttgen and Dirk Niebel, Germany is highlighting its role as a climate champion. Bonn would also be able to significantly enhance its profile as a UN city if the GCF Secretariat with its approximately 300 staff were to be established here. The decision about the Fund's headquarters will be taken in late 2012 by the 18th Conference of the Parties to the Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Qatar.