Highlight of the Week: NASA: New Panel to Further Copenhagen Work, Help Poor Nations Fight Global Warming

The United Nations has announced the creation of a new financing panel to jump-start developing countries' ability to fight global warming as part of December's Copenhagen Accord.

The Advisory Group on Climate Change Financing will feature "an even balance between developing and developed countries," according to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, but it is chiefly intended to aid poorer nations move toward lower emissions and adjust to the consequences of unchecked global warming, which the secretary-general called a "moral imperative."

The group will be expected to generate proposals for boosting the short- and long-term financing of strategies for climate change mitigation and adaptation and release final recommendations before the next conference of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), to be held in Mexico later this year. 

The Copenhagen Accord, the product of two weeks of negotiations by world leaders this winter, is considered thefoundation for a major international climate agreement, with more progress expected in 2010.