The Green Climate Fund (GCF) is “badly needed”, World Bank lead economist and regional climate change coordinator Raffaello Cervigni said this week, as negotiations over setting up the fund, which aims to help poorer countries fight climate change, suffered setbacks at the international climate change negotiations in Durban.

The G77 (Group of 77) countries, China and South America have all raised their concerns around a draft report produced by the transitional committee for the fund, while the US and Saudi Arabia have expressed their “unhappiness” with the report.

Other countries are calling for industrialised nations to make new commitments to reduce their green house gas emissions before committing to the climate fund.

The GCF aims to raise as much as $100-billion a year by 2020 for poorer nations seen as most vulnerable to climate change. The fund was agreed to at the sixteenth Conference of the Parties in Mexico last year.

“Signals from the official negotiations indicate that the fund becoming operational will take more time, but nevertheless, bridging the finance gap remains relevant. We still hope that a decision is taken at COP 17,” Cervigni told Engineering News Online on the sidelines of the climate change talks.

Eskom chairperson Zola Tsotsi also said it was critical for the GCF fund to become operational as soon as possible, as funding and uptake by the investment community in the green economy was not as rapid as one expected it to be.

Stephen Karakezi, Afrepren director, acknowledged the GCF as a means to accelerate to a low-carbon economy in Africa, but also believed that Africa should not “wait around” for such a fund to become available.

“Africa needs to move forward and ahead with building a pipeline of projects and more importantly bankable projects.

“There are also long lead times before a project becomes operational and now is the time to lay the foundation and to look to other sources of finance and investment options,” he explained.