US confirms first $500m to Green Climate Fund

US lawmakers agreed on Wednesday to a first payment of US$500 million to the United Nations’ Green Climate Fund.

Reports have suggested that the Republicans could stall the $3 billion pledge to the Fund made by the White House in 2015.

A new global climate deal to combat climate change was agreed in Paris on Saturday by 195 UN member states and the GCF is part of the plans to support adaptation and mitigation projects in developing countries.

The US State Department will meet its first instalment for the Fund in 2016.

Karen Orenstein from Friends of the Earth US said: “This is a rebuke to those Congressional extremists who tried to play politics with desperately needed money to help the world’s poor take climate action… Morality and reason, rather than science-denying isolationism, prevailed in this case.”

$10 billion has so far been pledged to the GCF from developed nations.

The fund is part of international efforts to help the world’s poorest cope with the impacts of climate change and invest in new, cleaner energy systems.