Minister Trevor Manuel, MP was elected as one of the three co-chairs of the Transitional Committee for the design of the Green Climate Fund in Mexico City last night. The Transitional Committee was established after the Cancun meeting of the Congress of the Parties (COP16) to fulfil three tasks: designing the governance arrangements of a Green Climate Fund, mobilising resources for this fund and setting out the modalities of spending these resources.

Once the broad governance arrangements have been agreed to, a formal Green Climate Fund would be established to support the financing needs of developing countries in making their countries more resilient to climate change and in supporting their transition to a low carbon future.

The other two chairs are Mr. Ernesto Cordero Arroyo, Minister of Finance and Public Credit of Mexico and Mr. Kjetil Lund, State Secretary, Ministry of Finance, Norway. The three joint chairs would oversee the Transitional Committee, manage its agenda, deliberations and direct the work that arises from this Committee.

Minister Manuel’s role as part of UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon’s High Level Advisory Panel on Climate Finance, his previous chairmanship of the Development Committee of the World Bank and his role as Finance Minister in South Africa makes him an ideal representative of South Africa, Africa and developing countries in general on this committee.

Minister Manuel is one of seven African representatives on the Transitional Committee. The Committee consists of 40 representatives from all the UN regions and reports to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). South Africa’s interest in this committee is all the more pertinent because we host COP17 in Durban at the end of the year.

Furthermore, the Minister has been appointed as to the Board of the Global Green Growth Institute chaired by Han Seung-soo, former Prime Minister of the Republic of Korea. This is an institution that conducts research into climate change and advises companies and countries on policies to adapt to and combat climate change. The Global Green Growth Institute is co-chaired by Lord Nicholas Stern, Professor at the London School of Economics and Thomas Heller, Professor at Stanford University.

These are part time positions. Minister Manuel’s main task is to oversee the development of a vision statement and national plan for the country.