France hopes for $100 billion climate fund by 2020

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said he expected there to be a global consensus to fulfil the ‘famous promise of a $100 billion’ climate fund by 2020.

“Now we have the feeling that really it will be achieved, which is the key for confidence,” he told a press conference in Dhaka yesterday.

Fabius and his German counterpart Frank-Walter Steinmeier together arrived in Dhaka yesterday morning, and left the city the same night.

In the run-up to the crucial climate conference COP21 in Paris, the two foreign ministers said they want to set a strong symbol by jointly visiting Bangladesh which is heavily threatened by the adverse effects of climate change.

Fabius said: “Up to now no study has been on done where we are in terms of financing.”

The OECD will submit a report on the status of financing at a global conference in Peru next month, he said.

The report will disclose how much public and private money had been pledged to the $100 billion climate fund.

“If we can do it, it will be a great chance because it would give confidence,” Fabius said.

The French foreign minister said governments were being asked to make voluntary commitments.

Fabius admitted that to get a legally binding document at the climate summit in Paris would be a difficult task.

“The main difficulty is the consensus agreement … We are working to find a formula which makes it, I would say, compulsory,” he said.

At the inauguration ceremony of the Franco-German Embassy, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said the joint project makes Dhaka a very special place.

“The building we are inaugurating today symbolises our unique friendship, the unique partnership we will build on to address the joint challenges ahead of us,” he said.

“We must act together to stop global warming now,” he said.

The climate conference in Paris is a key opportunity and global leaders must get closer to the goal and must not miss this opportunity, he said.

“Germany and France are working closely for success in Paris. That is why we have come to Dhaka today,” Steinmeier said.

A French embassy press release said plans to inaugurate German-funded anti-cyclone shelters were cancelled due to bad weather.

Instead, the visiting foreign ministers took a boat trip on the Bangshi River north-west of Dhaka and witnessed vast inundated areas.

After trip, the foreign ministers returned to Dhaka to meet with Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.

They also had a working lunch meeting with Bangladesh Foreign Minister AH Mahmood Ali.

In the afternoon they visited the future Franco-German Embassy in the capital’s Baridhara.

It is the first embassy worldwide jointly built and operated by France and Germany and is intended to be a symbol of the friendship between the two countries.

From its opening in the summer of 2016, the Franco-German Embassy will serve as a joint workplace of German and French diplomats and their Bangladeshi colleagues.