The high-level advisory group on climate change financing has met in London for the first time to chalk out a plan of action for the coming months.
"Today's meeting focused on establishing priorities and a plan of action for the Group's work, which will feed into the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)
process," Martin Nesirky, Ban's spokesperson, told reporters here on Wednesday.
The group has been set up by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to mobilise the money promised for climate change during the Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen last December.
"The Group is expected to issue initial outputs before the UNFCCC negotiating session to be held at the end of May and early June, and the final report will be submitted to the Secretary-General by November," he added.
The climate talks at Copenhagen in December failed to produce a legally binding treaty. Instead the participants took note of the Copenhagen Accord.
Key elements of the Accord included a limit 2 degree rise of global temperature, 100 billion dollars of long term finance to developing countries and 30 billion dollars to
short-term finance to the poorest and most vulnerable countries.
From India, Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission, Montek Singh Ahluwalia is part of the 19 member committee, to which new people have now been added --Christine Lagarde, Finance Minister of France, and Sri Mulyani Indrawati, Finance
Minister of Indonesia.
"The Group will seek to identify new and innovative sources of climate financing to reach USD 100 billion per annum, with further scale-up envisioned in the future," Nesirky said.
Meanwhile, the UNFCCC has published a report on the submissions of pledges made by 75 countries to cut or limit emissions of greenhouse gases by 2020. These nations account for more than 80 per cent of global emissions.
"The results include that 41 industrialized countries have formally communicated their economy-wide targets to the UNFCCC, while 35 developing countries have communicated information on the mitigation actions they are planning to take, provided they receive the appropriate support in terms of finance and technology," Nesirky said.
On the matter of the next chief of the UNFCCC, following the resignation of the present head, Yvo de Boer, Nesirky noted that deadline for submission ended on Tuesday.
"Candidates would not be identified by name or nationality," he said. India,South Africa and Chile are known to have submitted names for the post.