Organizers meet to create $100b climate fund

A new global fund on climate change that aims to channel $100 billion a year in aid to poor countries selected officials from South Africa and Australia as its leaders at its first meeting Thursday. The U.N.'s Green Climate Fund - created as part of a deal struck in December 2011 at the 194-nation climate talks in Durban, South Africa - will be led by Zaheer Fakir, head of international relations for South Africa's environment agency, and Ewen McDonald, deputy head of Australia's international development agency, the fund said in a statement. In what is hoped will serve as a new model of climate financing, the fund would receive and distribute $100 billion that rich nations have pledged annually by 2020 to help poorer countries adapt to changing climate conditions and to move toward low-carbon economic growth. The commitment to provide those billions in climate aid through the new "green" fund came as part of a hard-fought agreement in Durban that was meant to set a new course for the global fight against climate change for the coming decades...more