Inaugural Gef Meet In April

The first meeting of the Global Environment Facilitys (GEF) assembly will be held at the Vigyan Bhavan here from April 1-3, 1998. Announcing this, GEF senior external relations coordinator Hutton G Archer said yesterday this would provide a unique opportunity for all participating governments to exchange views on the activities undertaken it.

GEF, a multilateral financing mechanism, has 161 member countries and its activities are supervised by a governing council. 36 donor countries contribute to its corpus, which in the second replenishment has been raised from $2 billion to $2.75 billion.

India, which has been provisioned aid worth $125.01 million under the first replenishment funding, is a donor as well as a recipient country.

Several high-level panel discussions have been scheduled during the three-day event.

Representatives of donor countries, government and non-government organisations, environment experts, scientists and a host of other delegates are expected to attend the meet, Archer said.