OSLO, (Reuters) – Norway’s Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg will take over from Britain’s Gordon Brown as co-chair of a U.N. group looking at ways to raise finance to help poor nations to combat climate, Norway said yesterday.
“It’s decisive to ensure sufficient financing of measures against climate change in poor nations to get a new international climate deal in place,” Stoltenberg said in a statement after his appointment.
In February, Brown, then British prime minister, was named by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to co-chair the group of 19 leading experts with Ethiopian Premier Meles Zenawi. Stoltenberg, head of Norway’s Labour Party, had been among members of the panel.
Brown lost last month’s British elections to Conser-vative David Cameron, meaning Ban had to appoint a new co-chair for the group, seeking ways of raising $100 billion a year from 2020 to help developing nations tackle global warming.
“Norway and I have worked on these questions for many years,” Stoltenberg told Norway’s NRK public broadcaster when asked why he thought he had got the job. There had been some speculation that Cameron might succeed Brown on the panel.
Stoltenberg hosted a meeting last month in Oslo at which donors promised $4 billion to help developing nations safeguard tropical forests, which soak up carbon dioxide as they grow.
