WB Has Set up Special Funds for Climate Change

Anchor: How much money would the World Bank budget for the climate change initiatives each year? What is the breakdown for various programs? Moreover, how much support China will get from the World Bank each year for climate change programs?

Andrew Steer: Well, as I mentioned before, we have certain special funds for climate changes, so the climate investment fund we have US$6.5 billion and that goes about US$4 billion for what we called clean technology. And then there is a special fund called the strategic climate fund that is for lowing income countries. And that has about another US$2.5 billion in there.

And there we have windows for renewable energy, for forests and for adaptation. So that is an example of a special fund that we have. We also have implemented an agency of the global environment facility, but then equally important; our regular activities are increasingly focusing on climate changes. So last year, if you looked at all of the country strategies that we prepared together with the countries, the World Bank helped with these this strategies, you will see that climate change was one of the main features in 90 percent of them. So developing countries care about climate change. That is why they ask us to help them on that. So if you add all of we do on renewable energy, on green cities and on agriculture, you will find it adds to several billion dollars a year.

And you also asked about china. (Anchor: Yeah, how much support china will get?) In china , something like almost half of all we do here is link to climate change, probably about I understand about 70 percent, we have to check on the number, about 70 percent of all the World Bank does in china is related to the environment, in one way or another.

I think it has just done the half of what we do is specifically link to climate changes. So for example, just this afternoon, we came for a meeting with the Beijing City government. Beijing is doing all kinds of important things. We help them at the time of Olympics to reduce pollution, reduce greenhouse gases, and reduce coal consumption and so on. And now we are helping them on some other issues relating to renewable energy, photovoltaics, energy efficiency and so on.

So those would be some of the things we do, but we have a wide program here in china including forestry- the largest forest project that we have in the world this year in china and because china has done something quite remarkable things. In the old days, the number of trees in china was shrinking, every year in the past the trees were in lost. The last ten years, every year the number of trees in china has grown. I mean the massive afforestation program. And the other countries are trying to catch up, because of what china has done in last ten years, the total forest cover of Asia has actually now turned around from the declining. Now it is just starting to increase.

Even though there are countries in the Asia who is losing a lot of trees, some extend, because there are more trees here. Now simply growing trees does not solve the problems, but it is a useful start.