Balancing Finance and Technology Key to Climate-Resilient Future

Bangkok, 13 September 2012 - Experts from 36 countries called on the international community to build the fundamental infrastructure that will help developing countries move to a low-carbon future at the end of a workshop run under the Technology Need Assessment Project (TNA).

"People in developing countries must be able to plan their low-carbon and more climate-resilient futures, and to be able to assess precisely which activities need to be supported with finance and technology by developed countries," said Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

"This workshop has gone a long way to determine precisely what is required," she added. "Governments now need to urgently press ahead with implementing what they decided in Durban last year and in Cancun in 2010, and to put the finishing touches to the new Technology Mechanism in Doha at the end of the year.

The three-day global experience-sharing workshop in Bangkok was run under the auspices of the TNA, which is implemented by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and funded by the Global Environment Facility (GEF).

Participating countries acknowledged the significance of the TNA project in engaging more stakeholders in the global response to combat climate change and take concrete actions. However, funding of proposed actions remains a major concern.

"The workshop has raised a number of important points which needs to be addressed in the way forward," said Mark Radka, Head of Energy Branch, UNEP. "The request for capacity building and access to finance being two important points, UNEP's support does not stop with the TNA process. If called upon, we will work with governments and other relevant partners to support national processes to spearhead the transition to a green economy."

Participating countries also called on the Technical Executive Committee to work with them to create synergies between international mitigation and adaptation policy actions such as Low Emission Development Strategies (LEDS) and nationally appropriate mitigation actions (NAMAs) to prevent future TNAs ending up as stand-alone initiatives. More