G77: EU funding
“insignificant”
Lumumba
Stanislaus Di-Aping, negotiator for 130 developing countries
in the Group of 77, writes off the European Union as “providing
no finance whatsoever”.
Marianne Bom - 12/12/2009 - Lumumba Stanislaus Di-Aping
of Sudan – negotiator for the G-77 – is definitely
not impressed by EU’s pledge to fund 7.2 billion euro
over the next three years.
"I
believe they are not only insignificant, they actually breed
even more distrust on the intentions of European leaders
on climate change," said Lumumba Stanislaus Di-Aping
of Sudan on Friday, according to AFP.
"Our
view is that European leaders are acting as if they were
climate sceptics," he said. "Fundamentally, they
are saying this problem does not exist and therefore they
are providing no finance whatsoever."
The
G-77 negotiator also criticized the EU proposal because
it fails to address the issue of setting up long-term financing
mechanisms. The EU estimates the need for funding to developing
countries to be around 100 billion euro annually by 2020.
The both public and private money from developed countries
should be spent on adaptation to and mitigation of global
warming in developing nations.
The
Chinese Vice Foreign Minister He Yafei also worried about
the long term funding:
"It
will be relatively easy for developed countries to come
up with a number for the short term for three years,"
he told AFP. "But what shall we do after three years?"
Tough
bargaining still ahead at UN climate talks
After
one week of UN-led climate negotiations in Copenhagen, some
money is finally on the table and a draft agreement has
been circulated. Now the really hard bargaining begins.
12/12/2009 - The draft proposal was sent around Friday to
the 192-nation conference, although it set no firm figures
on financing or cutting greenhouse gas emissions. And the
negotiations on sharing the burden are likely to still go
down to the wire and await the arrival of the world's leaders
next week.
To
top it off, the United States and China — the world's
top two carbon polluters — even got into a battle
of words.
"It's
time to begin to focus on the big picture," said Yvo
de Boer, the top UN climate official. "The serious
discussion on finance and targets has begun."
A
much-disputed 188-page text was whittled down to a mere
seven pages of stark options on how much global warming
is acceptable and how deeply nations must individually and
collectively cut carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.
Options
ranged from nearly eliminating global emissions to cutting
them in half by 2050.
The
document forced countries to abandon long-held posturing
on secondary topics and focus on crunch issues. Starting
Saturday, environment ministers will be able to go through
the 46 points of text one by one, checking off some and
leaving the toughest for the 110 heads of state and government
arriving at the end of next week.
Many
countries voiced reservations about the structure of the
document or some of its clauses. "But that's all right.
That's what negotiations are all about," de Boer said.
Todd
Stern, the special US climate envoy, called the text "constructive"
but singled out the section on helping poor countries lower
their growth of carbon emissions as "unbalanced."
He said the requirements on industrial countries were tougher
than on developing nations and the section was not "a
basis for negotiation."
Environmental
groups welcomed the text as a step forward, although they
lamented the absence of what they considered essential elements.
"It's
a good pointer to a number of issues to be dealt with at
the ministerial and even the head-of-state level over the
next week," said Kim Carstensen of the environmental
group WWF. "We're disappointed it does not include
any clarity on what the legal outcome will be."
It
said all countries together should reduce emissions by a
range of 50 percent to 95 percent by 2050, and rich countries
should cut emissions by 25 to 40 percent by 2020, in both
cases using 1990 as the baseline year.
So
far, industrial nations' pledges to cut emissions have amounted
to far less than the minimum.
After
years of being bogged down in detail, the draft highlighted
the broad goals the world must achieve to avoid irreversible
change in climate that scientists say could bring many species
to extinction and cause upheavals in many parts of the Earth.
The
draft agreement, drawn up by Michael Zammit Cutajar of Malta,
said global emissions of greenhouse gases should peak "as
soon as possible," while avoiding a target year.
It
called for new funding in the next three years by wealthy
countries to help poor nations adapt to a changing climate,
but mentioned no figures. And it made no specific proposals
on long-term help for developing countries.
The
funding is perhaps the hardest part.
As
the draft was circulated, European Union leaders announced
in Brussels after two days of tough talks that they would
commit 3.6 billion US dollars (2.4 billion euro) a year
until 2012 to a short-term fund for poor countries. Most
of this money came from Britain, France and Germany. Many
cash-strapped former East bloc countries balked at donating
but eventually all gave at least a token amount to preserve
the 27-nation bloc's unity.
Still
unknown is how much the wealthier nations, such as the US
and Japan, will contribute.
Do UNFCCC