African leaders gathered in a United Nations-backed meeting today urged the international community to support a fund intended to help poor countries adapt to the consequences of climate change and mitigate its effects of their economies and the environment.

"Finances are critical," Abdoulie Janneh, UN Under Secretary General and Executive Secretary of the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), told UN Radio at the end of the five-day Seventh African Development Forum in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa.

"We must mobilize our own resources to really again underpin the importance we attach to climate change. But this is the challenge that was imposed on Africa.

"We are not contributing much to this phenomenon of climate change and therefore what we are saying is that those countries that have created this should really come up with the resources necessary," Mr. Janneh said.

The theme of the Forum was "acting on climate change for sustainable development in Africa," and was jointly convened by the African Union Commission, the African Development Bank and ECA.

At the UN climate change conference in Copenhagen, Denmark, last December, developed nations pledged $30 billion of fast-track funding for developing countries through 2012 and committed to raise $100 billion annually by 2020.