Another Casualty of Climategate?

by Claudia Rosett @ PajamasMedia.com

Could it be yet another knock-on effect of the crumbling of the United Nations ‘climate consensus” facade? One of Kofi Annan’s old-boy clubs appears to be in trouble.

Since retiring from the United Nations, Kofi Annan — among his other activities — has been serving as president of a Geneva-based foundation, the Global Humanitarian Forum, headquartered in a delightful villa smack near the front gates of the UN’s palatial Geneva office complex — and especially fond of promoting “climate justice.” The foundation fields a board crammed with UN retreads from Kofi Annan’s days as UN Secretary-General, and is supposed to be devoted to “exemplary” programs in humanitarian assistance (something that can hardly be said of the UN itself under Annan’s 1997-2006 management). Among the board members are Annan’s former special adviser, Lakhdar Brahimi; former head of the UN’s world Food Program, Catherine Bertini; former UN humanitarian coordinator, Jan Egeland; former head of the discredited old Human Rights Commission, Mary Robinson; and former heads of the IMF and World Bank – Michel Camdessus and James Wolfensohn… you get the idea. Also on the board is a name that climategate buffs will recognize – head of the IPCC, Rajendra Pachauri.

If that sounds like a recipe for success, apparently this mix is less appealing than when all these folks were empowered to tap directly into torrents of tax dollars (especially U.S. tax dollars) — though this foundation does seem to have received plenty from assorted governments. But not enough, it now seems. The foundation’s web site is reporting that due to “disappointing receipts from donors,” the board is “urgently considering options for the future direction of the organization.”

I don’t have details at this point on why, exactly, donors have been losing interest. Could it possibly be that this climate-crusading crew has become somewhat less enticing a bet?