27 August 2015: The Secretariat of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) has established a Regional Collaboration Centre (RCC) to promote the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) in the Asia-Pacific Region.

The new centre will be operated in partnership with the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies (IGES) and will support Asia-Pacific countries in identifying and designing CDM projects and offering opportunities to reduce transaction costs. The Asia-Pacific RCC is hosted in IGES offices in Bangkok, Thailand and became operational on 1 September 2015. It will work in collaboration with the RCCs in Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean.

Welcoming the establishment of the centre, UNFCCC Executive Secretary Christiana Figueres noted that the new centre “is a further step towards a truly global climate change response and serves as another example of successful international cooperation.” Professor Hironori Hamanaka, Chair of the Board of Directors of IGES, applauded the inter-agency cooperation as an important step towards addressing climate change.

This is the fifth CDM RCC established by the UNFCCC in partnership with a regional organization. The other centres are in Lomé, Togo; Kampala, Uganda; Saint George’s, Grenada; and Bogotá, Colombia. [UNFCCC News Release]