Alister Doyle, PlanetArk 4 Dec 08;
POZNAN, Poland (Reuters) - The world may need a new U.N. pact to compensate victims of climate change or risk a tangle of billion-dollar lawsuits linked to heatwaves, droughts and rising seas, a study said on Wednesday.
The report, commissioned by the WWF UK environmental group, said the world already had compensation deals for accidents from nuclear power, oil spills, or even objects launched into space. But there were no U.N. schemes for damage from climate change.
"The likelihood of legal action against major-emitting countries is increasing," according to the 37-page study of options written by two climate lawyers.
Among options were an international compensation fund set up by some future U.N. treaty to compensate victims, according to the report, released on the sidelines of December 1-12 U.N. talks in Poland on fighting climate change.
"You need to address this. The science is progressing far enough to make these kinds of claims legitimate," said Peter Roderick, a director of the Climate Justice Program and a co-author of the study.
"It makes more sense to come up with a system, rather than people starting to litigate," he told Reuters.
The U.N. Climate Panel said last year it was at least 90 percent certain that human activities, led by burning of fossil fuels, were to blame for most of the warming in the past 50 years.
TOBACCO
"Potential claims for compensation could be way above any precedented damage in the past," said Kit Vaughan, a climate change adaptation adviser at the WWF UK, such as billion-dollar settlements linked to health damage from tobacco or asbestos.
Many small island states, for instance, fear that rising sea levels threaten to wipe low-lying coral islands off the map.
The Federated States of Micronesia (FSM), a nation of more than 600 islands in the western Pacific with a population of 107,000, said the rising seas were caused by emissions from nations thousands of miles (km) away.
"The cost will be enormous...It shouldn't be the burden of the FSM to carry -- this is climate change caused by trans-boundary pollution," said M. J. Mace, a FSM delegate at the December 1-12 conference.
Small island states have been calling for an International Climate Fund and an insurance mechanism since 1991. Tuvalu in the Pacific once spoke of trying to sue the United States for emissions.
Roderick said one problem is that most international funds compensate for abrupt accidents -- not creeping damage such as rising sea levels that are projected by the U.N. Climate Panel to rise by 18-59 cm this century.
Pledged funds under main U.N. schemes to help countries cope with climate change total only about $300 million. Many studies project that tens of billions of dollars a year will be needed to help adapt.
"We risk a massive shortfall," Vaughan said. He said the study was meant to provoke discussions on options.
