Do you want to know more about how Obama would address global challenges at the United Nations ? Tune in and Esther Brimmer will tell you live @ Conversation with America.

Posted by DipNote Bloggers / September 05, 2012

Click here to read this on DipNote of US State Dept

Esther Brimmer, Assistant Secretary of State for International Organizations, will hold a conversation with Stewart Patrick, Senior Fellow and Director of the International Institutions and Global Governance Program at the Council on Foreign Relations, and Heather Hurlburt, Executive Director of the National Security Network, on Addressing Global Challenges at the UN. The discussion will be moderated by Cheryl Benton, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs, and will be available for on demand viewing soon on DipNote, the Department of State's official blog.

You are invited to participate by submitting questions, some of which will be selected for response during the taping. Submit your questions below on DipNote and join the ongoing discussion via Twitter using the hashtag #UNGA. Please submit questions via DipNote and Twitter as soon as possible for consideration.

Through Conversations With America, leaders of national non-governmental organizations have the opportunity to discuss foreign policy and global issues with senior State Department officials. These conversations aim to provide candid views of the ways in which leaders from the foreign affairs community are engaging the Department on pressing foreign policy issues.

View other Conversations With America here and by accessing the Conversations With America video podcasts on iTunes.


Enjoy this post? Share it with others.

Click here to read this on DipNote of US State Dept 

CFR: Guest Post: Ready for Primetime? The $100 Billion Climate Fund

Click here to read full article on Council of Foreign Relations

by Guest Blogger for Stewart M. Patrick
August 9, 2012

Curtis Wold, of the Kansas Wetlands Education Center, examines one of the dry pools at the Cheyenne Bottoms Wildlife Area, in Great Bend, Kansas August 7, 2012 (Jeff Tuttle/Courtesy Reuters).

Below, my colleague Farah Thaler, associate director of CFR’s International Institutions and Global Governance program assesses the progress of and prospects for the Green Climate Fund.

After delays and political bickering, a late August date was announced last week to hold the first meeting of the Green Climate Fund (GCF)—the ambitious multilateral funding instrument to help developing countries tackle climate change. We should expect more snags in the coming years as the GCF is pieced together before it is fully operational.

The GCF, proposed at the 2009 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) meeting in Copenhagen, is envisioned to amass up to $100 billion a year after 2020 of additional and sustainable funds.  Through grants and concessional loans for climate projects, the fund is expected to finance mitigation and adaptation efforts in poor countries at an unprecedented scale. To put it in perspective, the largest climate fund today—the Climate Investment Funds under the umbrella of the World Bank—has $6.5 billion pledged for the period 2009-2012. The World Bank in total funds some $43 billion in development projects per year.  The GCF could double that.

Click here to read full article on Council of Foreign Relations