GCF head to deliver memorial lecture at CDB’s annual meeting

Héla Cheikhrouhou, Executive Director of the Green Climate Fund (GCF), is the keynote speaker of the 15th William G. Demas Memorial Lecture at the Pegasus Hotel, in Georgetown Guyana on May 27, 2014. The lecture, named in honour of the second President of the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB), is held during the week of the Bank’s Annual Meeting.

Ms. Cheikhrouhou, a Tunisian national, has spent more than a decade working in multilateral development banks, first in the Latin America and Caribbean region of the World Bank, and then for the African Development Bank (AfDB). While at the AfDB she took a lead role in scaling up green growth and climate resilient investments, with innovative blending of public, private, and climate finance.

“The CDB is placing very high priority on addressing climate change concerns in the interest of safeguarding the sustainable development of our Region. We therefore welcome Ms. Cheikhrouhou whose experience in the area of climate financing will be well received as the Region intensifies its efforts to build resilience to climate impacts, said Dr. William Warren Smith, president of the CDB.

Ms. Cheikhrouhou was appointed as the first Executive Director of the Green Climate Fund in June, 2013. The GCF was established to channel support to developing countries to help limit or reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, and to adapt to the unavoidable impacts of climate change.

The Fund has opened its headquarters in South Korea and is making steady progress towards becoming operational. It is envisaged that the Fund will grow over time into the leading funding facility for climate change actions in developing countries.

CDB’s Annual Meeting takes place on May 28 and 29, 2013. It will bring together Ministers of Finance from the Region along with Governors of Central Banks, economists, executives and academics to discuss issues that are of concern to the Bank’s Borrowing Member Countries. This year there will be a series of seminars dealing with public private partnerships, the green economy, agriculture and climate change, and a multidimensional approach to country poverty assessments.