Europe Pledges Billions for Climate Aid for Poor Nations

Europe Pledges Billions for Climate Aid for Poor Nations
By JAMES KANTER and ANDREW C. REVKIN
copyright by The New York Times
Published: December 11, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/12/science/earth/12climate.html?_r=1&ref=global-home


BRUSSELS — The European Union will contribute about $3 billion starting next year to help poorer countries deal with climate change, Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Britain announced on Friday, a move that seeks to improve the chances of reaching an accord next week at climate change talks in Copenhagen.

The French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, speaking alongside Mr. Brown here at a summit of E.U. heads of state, said that France would contribute some $620 million next year to the so-called fast-start fund, which is designed to run over a three-year period until 2012, and could amount to an European contribution of more than 6 billion euros — or nearly $9 billion — in total.

Mr. Sarkozy said further contributions to the fund would build credibility among some of the nations most exposed to the effects of global warming and that have demanded funding as part of any agreement reached in Copenhagen.

Underlining the stakes for nations that are trying to safeguard against harm from climate change, and for wealthier nations seeking to reshape the way they produce and consume energy, Mr. Brown said there were “few moments in history when nations are summoned to common decisions that will reshape the lives of men and women potentially for generations to come.”

Yvo de Boer, the head of the United Nations climate office, has called on industrialized nations to give $30 billion fund to the fund in order to help vulnerable countries to begin planning massive engineering projects like building higher sea walls and converting their electricity systems so they rely on low-carbon sources.

Mr. Brown said that Britain had increased earlier pledges by 50 percent to 1.2 billion pounds, or nearly $2 billion, over the next three years. He said Britain could increase that offer further, to 1.5 billion pounds, at negotiations in Copenhagen next week.

European diplomats said leaders still needed to decide whether to make some aspects of the funding they had pledged for the fast-start fund conditional on other major industrialized economies contributing to the pot.

Poor countries also are seeking a commitment from the industrialized world to provide long-term finance totaling more than $100 billion each year by the end of the next decade, and have tried to pressure richer countries to do more to cut their own greenhouse gas emissions.

Overnight in Copenhagen, some of the smallest and most vulnerable countries represented in climate talks — island states facing the prospect of centuries of rising seas in a warming world — fired off a warning shot in the form of a new draft text reducing by 0.5 degrees Celsius the proposed ceiling for global temperature accepted by most nations.

The world’s industrialized countries and emerging economic powers have pledged over the past year to work to limit warming to less than 2 degrees Celsius above where temperatures stood in the 1800s — a figure that translates into about a 1.3 degree Fahrenheit warming from today’s global temperature of about 59 degrees. Given trajectories for emissions and what is known about how greenhouse gases hold heat, even that target will be tough to reach, many climate scientists say.

In some ways, the move by the Alliance of Small Island States to cut the temperature ceiling is symbolic, aiming to increase pressure on industrialized powers to ramp up their commitment to greenhouse gas cuts and aid for vulnerable developing countries. It would also create a new multilateral fund for climate change, through which money would flow in to help poor countries finance actions cutting their emissions and also withstand environmental pressures exacerbated by climate change.

Other countries’ delegates were not quick to weigh in on the text Friday.

But observers from environmental groups said the language in the new text offers some points that could help bridge gaps that exist at the moment, including over how to sustain the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, a limited pact with terms that expire in 2012, as a parallel instrument for countries already bound by it, even as a new Copenhagen Protocol is completed.

Each would be an addendum to the grand treaty that forms the foundation for all the talks here — the 1992 Framework Convention on Climate Change.

“It is constructive, ambitious and fair,” said Kim Carstensen, leader of the global climate initiative of the World Wildlife Fund. We are calling on other countries to listen to the voice of those with most at stake — namely their very survival.”

James Kanter reported from Brussels and Andrew C. Revkin from Copenhagen.