The UN Development Programme (UNDP) has announced an agreement with financial services group Fortis to launch the first projects of the MDG Carbon Facility.
The Executive Board of the Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) has met recently in Bonn, Germany. The Board held its 37th meeting from 30 January-1 February 2008, and elected Rajesh Kumar Sethi (India) as the new Chair. Lex de Jonge (Netherlands) will become the Vice-Chair. Both positions are for a one-year term. The Board also appointed Chairs and Vice-Chairs for its Accreditation Panel, Methodologies Panel, Afforestation and Reforestation Working Group, and Small-Scale Working Group. 
The 16th Meeting of the Forum of Ministers of Latin America and the Caribbean, held in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, from 27 January to 1 February 2008, concluded with the adoption of decision on climate change, in which ministers endorsed the outcomes of the Bali UN Climate Change Conference. 
In a message to the Beijing International Conference on Combating Desertification, held Beijing, China, from 22-24 January, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said the “impact of desertification is intensifying due to climate change, which is reducing the availability of freshwater, fertile soil, and forest and vegetation.” 
In an address to the 9th Annual Global Development Network Conference in Brisbane, Australia, the World Bank’s Managing Director, Operations, Graeme Wheeler, said “climate change is more than an immense development challenge,” and emphasized that “it is a major threat to all our economic and political systems and requires vision, courage, and leadership to address it.” 
Speaking prior to a meeting with key government officials in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, IFAD Assistant President Matthew Wyatt said the “urgent new challenges such as climate change, a precarious global food supply and rising commodity prices,” make our long and successful partnership more crucial than ever. 
IISD Reporting Services’ flagship publication, Earth Negotiations Bulletin, will be published daily from the tenth special session of the Governing Council/Global Ministerial Environment Forum, which will convene in Monaco from 20-22 February 2008. 
The International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) is receiving significant new funding to harness major scientific advances and address some of the biggest unsolved problems in agriculture. 
In his address to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Intergovernmenal Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Chairman Rajendra Pachauri said “if action to tackle the threat of climate change emerges soon, driven by knowledge of where we are heading, as provided by the findings of the IPCC, there would be reason for optimism that other serious challenges facing the world may also evoke similar responses based on rational assessments of problems and knowledge driven solutions.” 
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