Dame Vivienne Westwood pledges £1million to tackle climate change

By Hannah Thomas  on Monday 28 November 2011

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Dame Vivienne Westwood has taken things into her own hands donating £1million of her fortune to fund green projects in the fight against climate change.

The designer claims governments have been too slow to distribute funds to tackle climate change.

In 2009, the World Bank set up a rainforest conservation fund and seven of the world's richest countries agreed to pledge $600million to it. Britain alonecontributed $186million to the investment fund.

But records show that only $15million worth of the fund has so far been distributed to worthy causes - prompting Westwood to take action.

SEE VIVIENNE WESTWOOD'S S/S'2012 COLLECTION AT PARIS FASHION WEEK HERE

'Governments are so slow that we can't wait for them anymore,' she explained on the eve of the United Nations climate talks in Durban, South Africa. 'We have to get things moving and hope that they'll join in.'

Dame Vivienne pledged the money to the charity Cool Earth, which is working to raise £7million to prevent logging in the rainforests of Borneo, the Congo Basin and Peru.

VIVIENNE WESTWOOD RED LABEL FOR S/S'12

'Preventing floods, droughts and freak weather patterns for future generations requires the world's generations to get down to serious talking in Durban over the next two weeks,' said climate change secretary Chris Huhne: 'We need to send out the strongest possible signal on our commitment to limit global temperature change.'

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Monday 28 November 2011

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