15 January 2010: The Joint Session of the Executive Boards of the UN Development Programme (UNDP), the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), and the World Food Programme (WFP) convened on 15 January 2010, in New York, US, and focused on the issue of climate change. On behalf of the four agencies, UNDP Administrator Helen Clark spoke on how the UN agencies, within their different but complementary mandates, can support countries in addressing the climate change challenge, through their programmatic activities at the country level to support capacity building to adaptation and mitigation, and access to climate financing. She noted that 40% of development investment from ODA and concessional lending is sensitive to climate risk and stressed that climate adaptation needs to be built in national development plans.
Clark also stressed that UNDP, UNFPA, UNICEF and WFP will work to ensure that climate change solutions are prominent in the assistance they provide to developing countries, including development and emergency assistance, disaster risk reduction, adaptation and mitigation, joint programming, monitoring and evaluation, and knowledge sharing. She noted that a variety of multi-donor trust funds that can be used to transfer resources to finance adaptation and mitigation are already in place, such as the UN REDD (reduced emissions from deforestation and forest degradation) Programme. In addition, during the meeting, the Malawi Climate Change Programme was presented to illustrate the use of the ‘One UN Fund’ to mobilize available resources.
Clark highlighted that the UN Development Group (UNDG) has developed guidelines to support the UN Country Team on how to mainstream disaster risk reduction and environmental sustainability into the programmatic activities at the country level and that specific guidelines on climate change will be issued soon. [UNDP Press Release]