*Administration of Barack Obama, 2014 *

**Joint Statement by President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Mark Rutte of the Netherlands on Climate Change and Financing the Transition to Low-Carbon Investments Abroad **

*March 24, 2014 *

The Netherlands and the United States share a common interest in urgent action to address global climate change. We affirm the importance of reaching a global climate change agreement in 2015 that can attract broad and ambitious participation. The agreement should reflect the continuous evolution of capabilities of countries in tackling this global challenge. It should also take account of the important role played by the private sector, sub-national actors, and civil society in finding solutions to addressing carbon pollution while improving the resilience of nations to the impacts of climate change. Our two countries pledge to continue our cooperation towards adopting such an agreement at the United Nations climate conference in Paris in 2015.

We reaffirm our support of internationally agreed commitments to scale up the mobilization of climate finance and recognize that different forms of financing are needed to support countries making the transition to a low-emission, climate resilient economy. We strive to deploy public resources to catalyze private climate finance in and to developing countries.

We emphasize that our work to scale up climate friendly investments in developing countries is most effective when combined with reducing public incentives for high-carbon infrastructure. To this end, the Netherlands is joining the United States, the United Kingdom, and others in agreeing to end support for public financing of new coal-fired power plants abroad except in rare circumstances. This includes our bilateral development finance institutions and projects financed through the multilateral development banks, where it should be noted that the Netherlands is a member of mixed constituencies. Complementing action already taken by the United States, our two countries are working together to promote a technology-neutral standard in the OECD Export Credit Group that limits support for high carbon intensity power plants by export credit agencies.

NOTE: An original was not available for verification of the content of this joint statement.

*Categories:* Joint Statements : Netherlands, the, Prime Minister Rutte*.*

*Names:* Rutte, Mark*.*

*Subjects:* Energy : Carbon dioxide emissions, reduction; Energy : Coal and clean coal technologies; Environment : Climate change; Netherlands, the : Prime Minister.

*DCPD Number:* DCPD201400189.