Environment minister Prakash Javadekar on Friday expressed concern over the empty coffers of the Green Climate Fund (GCF) despite its launch in 2009-10 and urged countries to agree to a roadmap for its capitalisation by 2015.

Speaking at the Major Economies Forum in Paris on Friday, Mr Javadekar emphasised that “quick capitalisation was the need of the hour” and the capitalisation should be facilitated majorly by public financing in grant terms.

He underlined that the private sector can “complement but not supplant” public finance needed to address climate change and its impacts.

“We are concerned that despite being launched in 2009-10, the GCF still has empty coffers. The need of the hour is the quick capitalisation as climate actions cannot wait,” Mr Javadekar said during his speech. “The capitalisation of the GCF should be facilitated majorly by public financing in grant terms. Many countries are emphasising on private sector investment and climate investment as panacea for all ills.

“However, in our view, the private sector can complement but not supplant public finance needed to address climate change and its impacts,” he said.

“The GCF should be capitalised by 2015. This requires countries to agree to a roadmap for achieving this,” he said.

Mr Javadekar also suggested that part of GCF should be used for financing critical technologies and purchase of IPRs and making them available to developing countries free of cost.

He rued that the Initial Resource Mobilisation (IRM) meeting in Oslo has hardly produced any result and said that reclassifying Overseas Development Assistance (ODA) as climate finance also cannot be done as it would have critical bearing on the pre-2020 and the post-2020 climate agenda. The minister said India had presented its Budget for 2014-15 on Thursday and had taken a number of steps to combat climate change.