Yahoo News 3 Sep 09;
ADDIS ABABA (AFP) – African nations will walk out of climate change talks in Copenhagen if their demands, including hefty compensations from the West, are not met, Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi said Thursday.
One of the key demands that the world's poorest continent is making is billions of dollars in compensation to help it cope with the effects of climate change.
However a panel representing the continent at the talks is yet to come up with a figure.
"If need be we are prepared to walk out of any negotiations that threatens to be another rape of the continent," said Meles, who leads the panel.
"While we reason with everyone to achieve our objective we are not prepared to rubber stamp any agreement by the powers," he told African officials and experts from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development at a meeting in Addis Ababa.
"We will use our numbers to delegitimise any agreement that is not consistent with our minimal position."
According to a study by the UK-based Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, global warming could cost the continent around 30 billion dollars a year by 2015.
That figure could rise to between 50 billion and 100 billion dollars by 2020 due to increasing costs to cope with climate change effects such as frequent and more severe floods, droughts and storms, as well as extreme changes in rainfall patterns, the group said.
African Union chairman Jean Ping urged rich nations not to renege on their financial commitments.
"It is my expectation that such financial resources must be from public funds and must be additional to the usual overseas development assistance," he told the gathering.
African countries will also demand that industrialised nations take measures to limit global warming to two degrees celsius and cut emissions by 25 to 40 percent by 2020.
"What we are not prepared to live with is global warming above minimum unavoidable levels," Meles said.
"We will therefore never accept any global deal that does not limit global warming to the minimum unavoidable level, no matter what levels of compensation and assistance are promised to us."
Africa may veto climate change deal: Ethiopian PM
Barry Malone, BBC 3 Sep 09;
ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) - Africa will veto any climate change deal that does not meet its demand for money from rich nations to cut the impact of global warming on the continent, Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi said on Thursday.
A U.N. summit scheduled for December in Copenhagen will try to reach global agreement on how to tackle climate change and come up with a post-Kyoto protocol to curb harmful emissions.
"We will use our numbers to delegitimize any agreement that is not consistent with our minimal position," Meles told a conference of climate change experts in Addis Ababa.
"If needs be we are prepared to walk out of any negotiations that threaten to be another rape of our continent."
Meles did not say how much money Africa would be looking for in Denmark but some experts have said the continent should ask for up to $200 billion a year.
Africa contributes little to the pollution blamed for warming but is the hardest hit by the drought and flooding cycle that is already affecting parts of the continent.
Ten African leaders last month held talks at the African Union (AU) headquarters in the Ethiopian capital and agreed on a common stance ahead of the Copenhagen talks.
"SINGLE NEGOTIATING TEAM"
"Africa will field a single negotiating team empowered to negotiate on behalf of all member states of the African Union," said Meles, who will represent the continent at the summit.
"Africa's interest and position will not be muffled as has usually been the case."
Meles -- who has become Africa's most outspoken advocate on climate change -- argued earlier this year that pollution in the northern hemisphere may have caused his country's ruinous famines in the 1980s.
A study published in May by the Geneva-based Global Humanitarian Forum said poor nations bear more than nine-tenths of the human and economic burden of climate change.
The 50 poorest countries, however, contribute less than 1 percent of the carbon dioxide emissions that scientists say are threatening the planet, the report said.
Developing nations accuse the rich of failing to take the lead in setting deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, and say they are trying to get the poor to shoulder more of the burden of emission curbs without providing aid and technology.
(Editing by Helen Nyambura-Mwaura)
