Financing Said Vital For World Climate Change Deal

Alister Doyle PlanetArk 2 Sep 10;

A global fund to help poorer countries switch to green industrial technology is vital in any new international pact to battle global warming, Switzerland's top climate change negotiator said on Wednesday.

The official, Franz Perrez, was speaking at a news conference on the eve of a two-day gathering of environmental ministers and experts from some 45 countries to discuss how to reach agreement on a funding deal.

"An agreement on viable long-term financing is one of the very important building blocks for a new convention to combat the challenge of climate change," said Perrez, whose country has organised the informal meeting together with Mexico.

In December, Mexico is to host a new formal effort to clear the way for a convention. A United Nations summit in Copenhagen at the end of last year ended in serious disarray.

Developing nations say billions of dollars are vital to help them start acting to slow global warming by shifting from fossil fuels, and to cope with challenges created by climate change ranging from droughts and floods to rising sea levels.

Big emerging economies like China, India and Brazil say they should not be hog-tied by environmental rules unless the West -- which they blame for global warming -- helps pay the cost.

It was agreed in Copenhagen that what Perrez dubbed a "fast-track" financing of some $30 billion was needed for the years 2010-2012 to create confidence, but the larger goal is to ensure by 2020 that $100 billion a year can be mobilized.

AUSTERITY PROGRAMMES

Environment ministers hope for progress on financing when they gather in Cancun from November 29 to December 10, despite austerity programmes adopted by rich nations in the wake of the world economic and financial crisis of 2008-09.

Perrez said the Geneva talks will try to pin down differences on how the funding will be set up and who might provide it, adding that he hoped an agreement might be reached by 2012 on how to create the mechanism.

The Copenhagen accord does not lay out who pays, or how to raise money, but among suggestions for 2020 are carbon markets, air travel levies and taxes on ships' fuel.

A Reuters overview last week showed that although specific promises so far for the 2010-12 period total $29.8 billion, some of this was old funding dressed up as new.

Japan, for instance, is promising half the total -- $15 billion -- but most of this is from a previous "Cool Earth Partnership" agreed several years ago to run from 2008-12.

The ministers' meeting will be the first since a review team called on Monday for a sweeping overhaul of the management of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change after it admitted there were errors in a 2007 report.

The review endorsed the main finding of the IPCC's report -- that mankind is to blame for global warming -- but Perrez said the furor over the errors might make it more difficult to raise the funds needed to tackle the overall challenge.

"But the basic understanding is still there," he said. "The developed countries recognize that they have to live up to their responsibilities."

(Editing by Jonathan Lynn and Tim Pearce)

Disasters show 'screaming' need for action - climate chief
Alexandra Troubnikoff And Richard Ingham Yahoo News 2 Sep 10;

GENEVA (AFP) – UN climate chief Christiana Figueres on Thursday warned that a string of weather calamities showed the deepening urgency to forge a breakthrough deal on global warming this year.

Speaking before some 40 countries were to address finance, an issue that has helped hamstring UN climate talks, Figueres said floods in Pakistan, fires in Russia and other weather disasters had been a shocking wakeup call.

"The news has been screaming that a future of intense, global climate disasters is not the future that we want," Figueres, newly-appointed executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), told reporters.

"Science will show whether and how those events are related to climate change caused by humanity's greenhouse-gas emissions, but the point is clear: We cannot afford to face escalating disasters of that kind."

Figueres called on governments to agree on "four or five" major planks at year-end UNFCCC talks in Cancun, Mexico, which would then serve as a platform for a 2012 global pact on climate.

"We read it that countries are assuming their responsibility, that they're being realistic, that they're being productive, that they're being constructive and that they're counting on very clear outcomes from Cancun," she said.

One of the issues in Cancun will be funding.

"The regulation of the financial issues is a key precondition for the successful conclusion of the climate negotiations in Cancun," said Swiss Environment Minister Moritz Leuenberger, in a speech to open the talks.

Hundreds of billions of dollars are needed to prevent future emissions of greenhouse gases by emerging economies and help poor countries facing worsening drought, flood, storms and rising seas.

The Geneva talks, running until Friday, gather more than 40 countries at ministerial level, including big advanced economies, emerging giants and countries representative of poor nations.

The tentative goal is to establish a "dialogue" on the broad lines of how to gear up as much as 100 billion dollars a years by 2020.

The many questions include the resources of this fund, the role of the private and public sector and how the money would be administered.

On Friday, Dutch Environment Minister Tineke Huizinga will unveil a website detailing action so far on "fast-track" finance of 30 billion dollars that has been promised over the next three years.

Both are the key pledges made by rich countries at the UN climate summit in Copenhagen last December, an event that bickering, textual wrangling and finger-pointing brought to within an inch of catastrophe.

Mistrust festers today, especially among developing countries eyeing the few solid promises made at that ill-fated meeting.

Developing countries in particular want assurances that the 30 billion dollars in short-term finance will come from new sources and is not siphoned off from development aid or existing budgets, said Oxfam policy advisor Romain Benicchio.

Switzerland and Mexico, co-hosting the meeting, insist the Geneva talks do not constitute the gathering of a cosy elite.

Instead, they say, the outcome will feed into the UN process, deemed the sole valid vehicle, despite its many problems, for dealing with the climate peril.

The 194-nation UNFCCC forum next meets in Tianjin, China, in October followed in Cancun from November 29-December 10.

After the traumatic outcome of Copenhagen, expectations have been dialled down.

At best, say experts, Cancun will deliver good progress on the main issues, but the world will have to wait for another year before a draft treaty sees daylight.

If all goes well, the accord would take effect beyond 2012, after present commitments under the UNFCCC's Kyoto Protocol expire, setting down a charter for drastically curbing man-made greenhouse gas emissions and building financial support.

Nations meet on climate cash, UN sees long haul
* 45 countries seek $30 bln 2010-12 in climate aid
* U.N. warns of long haul, no magic bullets
Alister Doyle, Reuters AlertNet 2 Sep 10;

GENEVA, Sept 2 (Reuters) - About 45 nations met on Thursday to seek ways to raise billions of dollars in aid to help the poor combat climate change as the United Nations warned them of a long haul to slow global warming.

Environment ministers and senior officials in Geneva were reviewing whether rich nations, hit by austerity cuts, are keeping a promise of $30 billion in "new and additional" climate aid for 2010-12 made at the U.N.'s Copenhagen summit.

"The funds are critical" to build trust between rich and poor damaged in Copenhagen, Christiana Figueres, the U.N.'s climate chief, told Reuters in an interview.

About 120 countries in Copenhagen also pledged to increase aid for developing nations to $100 billion aid a year from 2020, tapping sources such as carbon taxes or more costly plane tickets.

Figueres said cash could be a key to unlock progress on other climate problems, such as sharing clean technologies or protecting carbon-storing forests at the next meeting of environment ministers in Cancun, Mexico, from Nov. 29-Dec. 10.

Swiss Environment Minister Moritz Leuenberger told the start of the two-day talks that "the regulation of the financial issues is a key precondition for the successful conclusion of the climate negotiations in Cancun."

But Figueres predicted there would be no new global treaty to combat climate change in Cancun, even though she said that extreme weather such as floods in Pakistan or Russia's heat wave were "warning bells" about the risks of inaction.

"I don't think that governments are considering (a treaty) for Cancun," she said. A year ago, many nations were hoping that the Copenhagen summit in December would be a "big bang" deal to help solve climate change.

But that didn't happen and Figueres, head of the Bonn-based U.N. Climate Change Secretariat, said it was more realistic to look for gradual progress in solving climate change, adding that there was no "magic bullet".

Cancun could end up setting a new deadline for working out a more binding deal, perhaps by the end of 2012.

CANCUN

Figueres said it was vital that developed nations be able to point to $10 billion allocated to climate aid for 2010 by the time they meet in Cancun. But she urged developing nations to give leeway in judging if it was truly "new and additional" as agreed in Copenhagen.

She said that all nations' 2010 budgets were agreed by national parliaments by the time of the December summit. "There are justifiable reasons to see why 100 percent of this allocation (in 2010) will not be additional," she said.

The Netherlands plans to launch a new website on Friday to track climate promises.

An overview by Reuters shows that aid promises total $29.8 billion for 2010-12, but it is unclear how much is new. Japan, for instance, has pledged the most aid, at $15 billion, but much of that was decided several years ago.

Janos Pasztor, director of U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's climate change support team, said experts were trying to balance competing interests to come up with ways of raising $100 billion a year from 2020.

"There are different combinations of these sources that can give you $100 billion or more," he said, referring to ideas such as levies on carbon trading or plane fares. "But none of the sources on its own will be enough."' (Editing by Charles Dick)

FACTBOX-Climate aid pledges at $30 bln goal, but some old
Reuters AlertNet 2 Sep 10;

Sept 2 (Reuters) - Pledges by rich countries to provide developing nations with "fast start" funds to fight climate change are nearing a $30 billion goal for 2010-12, but some is not "new and additional" as promised.

Environment Ministers and officials from 45 nations are meeting in Geneva on Sept. 2-3 to review the pledge, made at the U.N.'s Copenhagen summit in December, and a linked goal of raising $100 billion a year in aid from 2020. [ID:nLDE681161].

Promises for 2010-12 so far total $29.8 billion, according to a Reuters overview compiled from official national data. It also shows projects in developing nations, from Tonga to Ethiopia, to help curb global warming.

WORLDWIDE

More than 120 nations agreed to the U.N.'s Copenhagen Accord in December for curbing global warming. On finance, developed nations agreed to give "new and additional resources ... approaching $30 billion for the period 2010-2012."

There are no rules for deciding who contributes what, no common reporting and no definition of what qualifies as "new and additional". The Copenhagen Accord also speaks of raising aid to at least $100 billion a year from 2020.

NATIONAL

UNITED STATES - $3.2 BILLION. The U.S. contribution to fast-start aid was $1.3 billion for 2010 and President Barack Obama requested $1.9 billion for 2011. The United States is a leading donor in a $3.5 billion plan to protect forests from 2010-12 also funded by Australia, France, Japan, Norway and Britain. For 2010, the State Department says that $448 million goes to helping countries adapt to climate change, $595 million to clean energy and $261 million to "sustainable landscapes."

JAPAN - $15 BILLION. Japan said in Copenhagen it would offer $15 billion in the three years to end-2012, including $11 billion in public money. The total amount includes around 1 trillion yen ($11.87 billion) left over from the "Cool Earth Partnership" initiative under the previous Liberal Democratic Party-led government running from 2008-2012. As of end-April, Japan had spent $5.3 billion for projects in countries including Indonesia, the Philippines, Bangladesh, India, Egypt, Kenya and Nepal. Japan has said it would spend the money "while monitoring developments in global negotiations". A foreign ministry official said it is unlikely to back off from the pledge and will continue to provide funding for developing countries which have backed the Copenhagen Accord and are working for a deal.

CANADA - $377 MILLION. Canada has committed C$400 million ($377 million) as fast-start funds for the 2010-11 fiscal year, Environment Canada said. The funds are additional to those previously considered for climate change programmes before Copenhagen. Future contributions have not been decided.

AUSTRALIA - $504 MILLION. In June, promised 559 million Australian dollars ($504.1 million) to the 2010-12 funds.

EUROPEAN UNION - $9.59 BILLION - In a mid-year review, the European Commission said "the EU is delivering on its fast-start pledge" for 2010 of 2.4 billion euros. For 2010-12, it said 7.55 billion euros ($9.59 billion) had been confirmed.

At that review, member states gave the following examples of projects in developing nations:

GERMANY - 4.2 million euros from 2009-10, to be increased by 10 million in 2010, to help Tonga and Vanuatu improve land use. Also, 2.25 million euros from 2010-13 to Ghana to help micro-insurance projects covering risks of droughts and extreme weather.

FRANCE - Loans to support national climate change action plans -- 185 million euros to Mexico, $800 million for Indonesia, 25 million euros for Vietnam, 125 million euros for Mauritius.

BRITAIN - 50 million sterling ($77.10 million) for Indonesia from 2011-16 to help curb greenhouse gases, partly by managing forests. Of the total, 19 million sterling is fast-start funds.

SPAIN - 45 million euros to the Adaptation Fund, which it says is the first significant contribution by a donor and 36 percent of Spain's pledge for fast-start funds for 2010.

THE NETHERLANDS - 310 million euros for fast-start funds for 2010-12. It says the funds are "new and additional" to overseas aid totalling 0.8 percent of gross national product. Of the cash, it plans to spend 90 million on renewable energy in Rwanda, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

SWEDEN - Says it is helping countries including Mali. It says it will provide about 800 million euros from 2010-12 for climate aid projects.

FINLAND - Finland's contribution to EU fast-start finance is 110 million euros for 2010-12, an increase over 2009 spending. Projects include forest conservation in Nepal.

EUROPEAN COMMISSION - Says it will provide 50 million euros of fast-start financing per year from 2010-12. In 2010, 25 million euros will be allocated to capacity building related to climate change mitigation, forestry and technology cooperation, and 25 million to actions focusing on adaptation in Ethiopia, Nepal and the Pacific region.

OTHER

NORWAY - $1 BILLION. Says fast-start funds so far comprise support for slowing deforestation, totalling $1 billion for 2010-12. Other amounts may follow for other activities. Forest projects include in Brazil, Guyana, Indonesia and Tanzania.

SWITZERLAND - $136 MILLION. The government is seeking 140 million Swiss francs ($135.9 million) in fast-start funds. That is about 0.45 percent of $30 billion -- Switzerland's share of greenhouse gas emissions by developed nations is 0.3 percent, but is wealthier than most so can afford more.

(Compiled by Alister Doyle in Oslo; Additional reporting by Richard Cowan in Washington, Chisa Fujioka in Tokyo, Pete Harrison in Brussels, Louise Egan in Ottawa, Laura MacInnis in Geneva; Editing by Noah Barkin)