Green Climate Fund to hold next meeting in S Korea

The Green Climate Fund, which will help poor countries fight global warming, will hold its next meeting from October 18 to 20 in South Korea, the body said Saturday. The fund was launched at a UN climate conference in Durban, South Africa, last year to help channel up to $100 billion (80 billion euros) a year in aid to poor, vulnerable countries by 2020 via investments from both public and private sources. Its 24-member board wrapped up a first meeting in Geneva on Saturday after three days of discussions to lay the foundations of the fund, selecting Songdo in South Korea as the location of its next gathering, a statement said. The board also decided on its process for selecting the country that will host the fund's headquarters, the interim secretariat said, without detailing the strategy. Of the six nations competing to host the fund -- Germany, Mexico, Namibia, Poland, South Korea and Switzerland -- one will be formally designated in late November at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) conference in Doha, Qatar. The Swiss press reported that Geneva and Bonn, which currently hosts the interim secretariat, are tipped as favourites.