Edging back from the abyss of climate change
- Source: Global Times
- [01:47 September 22 2009]
- Comments
Second, developed countries must now explicitly recognize that we will all have to play a signifi cant part in helping to finance mitigation and adaptation action by developing countries.
Our estimate is that by 2020, developing countries will need roughly an additional 100 billion euros ($150 billion) a year to tackle climate change. Part of it will be financed from economically advanced developing countries themselves. The biggest share should come from the carbon market, if we have the courage to set up an ambitious global scheme.
But some will need to come in flows of public finance from developed to developing countries, perhaps from 22 billion euros to 50 billion euros ($30 – $70 billion) a year by 2020. Almost half of this amount will be required to support adaptation action giving priority to the most vulnerable and poor developing countries.
Depending on the outcome of international burden sharing discussions, the EU's share of that could be anything from 10 to 30 percent, that is, up to 15 billion euros ($22 billion) a year.
We will need to be ready, in other words, to make a significant contribution in the mediumterm, and also to look at short term "start-up funding" for developing countries in the next year or so.
I look forward to discussing this with EU leaders when we meet at the end of October.
So we need to signal our readiness to talk finance this week.The counterpart is that developing countries, at least the economically advanced among them, have to be much clearer on what they are ready to do to mitigate carbon emissions as part of an international agreement.
They are already putting in place domestic measures to limit carbon emissions but they clearly need to step up such efforts – particularly the most advanced developing countries.
They understandably stress that the availability of carbon finance from the rich world is a prerequisite to mitigation action on their part, as indeed agreed in Bali.
But the developed world will have nothing to finance if there is no commitment to such action.
We have less than 80 calendar days to go till Copenhagen. As of the Bonn meeting last month, the draft text contains some 250 pages: a feast of alternative options, a forest of square brackets. If we don't sort this out, it risks becoming the longest and most global suicide note in history.
This week in New York and Pittsburgh promises to be a pivotal one, if only as it will reveal how much global leaders are ready to invest in these negotiations, to push for a successful outcome.
The choice is simple: no money, no deal. But no actions, no money!
Copenhagen is a critical occasion to shift, collectively, onto an emissions trajectory that keeps global warming below 2 degrees, so the fi ght back has to begin this week in New York.
The author is President of the European Commission
