The Green Climate Fund has confirmed Australia can’t decide how its contribution will be spent, thus contradicting the Australian government’s statements. At the end of 2014, when the Abbott government announced its decision to reverse its previous refusal to give money to the Green Climate Fund, it stated that the funding would have been invested in practical projects, and that it would have been provided only on the condition that Australia could set the terms of its involvement, investing the money in the support for the Asia Pacific, in the protection of rainforests and in combating illegal logging. However, the Green Climate Fund’s executive director Héla Cheikhrouhou declared that Australia will not be allowed to determine where its $200m contribution to the fund will be spent, and that resolutions about the paying out of the $10bn already promised will be made by the board following a clear set of guidelines and priorities. This means that individual contributors will not be able to determine where their money will be spent, even though they will be able to monitor exactly how the fund, as a whole, will perform in their areas of interest. Even so, it doesn’t look like many disputes will arise from this statement, as many of the priorities determined by the fund’s board match with the Australian government’s desired areas of expenditure. The fund is considered to be essential for the success of the Paris climate summit in December, due to the fact that it could work as an important mechanism to gain trust and win support for a new agreement from developing countries. Cheikhrouhou expects the fund to begin approving projects by later this year, and said that contributing countries would begin signing a template agreement in April. The gLAWcal Team EPSEI project Friday, 13 March 2015 (Source: Guardian)