Justin Yifu Lin calls for green fund for developing countries

BEIJING, Dec. 10 (Xinhua) -- Former chief economist of the World Bank Justin Yifu Lin has called for the establishment of a green fund to encourage developing countries to adopt green industrial approaches.

Lin, now director of the Center for New Structural Economics of Peking University, made the remarks during a UN Environment book launch Saturday evening in Beijing.

Green industrial approaches are becoming the consensus today to pursue development in parallel with environmental protection, but green technologies are neither available nor affordable for developing countries, said Lin.

"Green technologies require innovation and huge capital input," said Lin. "They will only come from high-income countries or large middle-income countries like China."

According to Lin, compared to traditional energy, renewable energy is more expensive, so subsidies to the developing world to adopt new technology are desirable.

"Some kind of global green fund to subsidize developing countries is needed to adopt green industrial technologies in the industrialization process," said Lin. Enditem