Rising Tide: More low-lying nations that are exposed to the sea are joining a chorus of countries that say they need more financial help to adapt, now.
Image: Flickr/Damian Gadal
Money took center stage in Doha, Qatar, yesterday as vulnerable countries declared that $100 billion annually by 2020 is insufficient to protect them from the impacts of climate change.
Speaking on the second day of U.N. climate change negotiations, diplomats from Malawi and Zimbabwe demanded more transparency from developed countries claiming to deliver money. And, they said, a clear blueprint for ramping up aid between 2013 and 2020 is a must.
"This climate finance road map will be required. ... It is a precondition for any successful outcome in Doha," said Evans Njewa of Malawi, who is coordinating finance issues for least-developed nations.
Developed countries say they have fulfilled an obligation to deliver $30 billion to poor nations over the past three years. Meanwhile, countries are building up a Green Climate Fund to deliver the next promise: about $100 billion annually in public and private dollars for climate aid.
But those middle years remain undefined, and some activists say they fear countries will fall off the climate finance cliff without formal obligations to provide a steady increase of money throughout the decade.
Meanwhile, Njewa said, "The $100 billion pledge from the Copenhagen Accord is not adequate." Rather, he said, vulnerable nations need about $600 billion annually, or 1.5 percent of the gross domestic product of industrialized nations.
"We are being very conservative," said David Kaluba, chief economist for Zambia's Ministry of Finance. He said vulnerable countries, most of which are dependent on rain-fed agriculture and lack internal capacity to adapt, face enormous challenges.
"One hundred billion is very minimum compared to the task that is ahead of us, and mind you, climate change is not an issue of the future," he said.
Earlier this week, the United States announced it had delivered $7.5 billion in both grants, development and export financing from 2010 through 2012. Japan says it has delivered $17.4 billion.
'Enormous' efforts may not be enough
But developing country negotiators say they have misgivings about whether rich countries have actually honored their collective pledges. According to the U.K.-based International Institute for Environment and Development, countries fell far short of the goal, delivering $23.6 billion.
And American environmental groups say U.S. aid for clean energy through the Export-Import Bank has been undermined by the nearly $10 billion that went through that agency to support fossil fuels.
"The Obama administration is in Doha right now saying that we are making 'enormous' efforts to reduce emissions, and yet at the same time, an agency directly under the control of the president has now set a new record for fossil fuel subsidies," said Justin Guay, coal campaigner for the Sierra Club.
"I think it speaks volumes to the administration's doublespeak on climate change," he said. "On the one hand, they are supporting increased investment in clean energy, which is very important and which we certainly welcome. But at the same time, they are directly financing the problem."
The discussion came amid the opening of debate yesterday over what a possible new treaty to be signed by 2015 and take effect in 2020 might look like. An agreement in Durban, South Africa, last year to launch a process toward this new treaty outlined a new way of fighting climate change in which all emitters, not just rich industrialized nations, would take legal obligations.
That notion appeared to hit a rhetorical wall, though, as country after country demanded that there be no "rewriting" of the U.N. climate convention, which calls for "common but differentiated responsibilities" among nations.
"The Durban Platform is by no means a process to negotiate a new regime, nor to renegotiate, rewrite or reinterpret the convention or its principles," said China's lead negotiator, Su Wei.
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14 Comments
Add CommentBtw- what this all means in practical terms is that atmospheric CO2 levels will continue to rise worldwide for the next several decades until technology gets to the point where it is not cost efficient to generate energy from fossil fuels. This will happen regardless of what the US or the EU does. It needs to not be cost efficient to use fossil fuels around the world and not just in an individual country.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNo worldwide treaty will be enacted on this issue that is enforceable because such a treaty would not be in the best interests of the leaders of many key nations. That means that nations need to build robust infrastructure over that same time period to minimize any damage from normal bad weather or from that caused by an evolving climate.
The days of White man's burden are longh over. Go here and see the real issue...exploding populations.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMoney...gee whiz....er, uh...NO!! Odd how they money to arm corrupt generals and find time to torture their own citizens
Happy to send container loads of condoms.
http://www.indexmundi.com/g/r.aspx?c=mx&v=25
Yup, send money to India and Pakistan. Somehow they find funds to build nuclear weapons but they demand our tax dollars.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf folks REALLY cared about the environment they would dismiss the nonsense spoted by tinpot dictators in basketcase coutries. Thes leaders are environmnental criminals who care squat for human life or anything else.
@littleredtop, denying an established fact only marks you as a fanatic. It does nothing to prove your accusation. By coming to a science site and denying science you have only succeeded in proving that you are an idiot. After that, nothing else you say has any meaning. It would seem to me that your very existence is owed to science, perhaps a science experiment gone terribly wrong. So by attacking science it is in fact you that is biting that hand that is feeding you. The third world is biting the hand that has been picking their pockets and propping up the petty dictatorships that oppress them. But it is no surprise that someone who knows nothing about science also knows nothing about politics, economics and history.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHowdy RSchmidt,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAny substantiation for the claim that anthropogenic global warming is backed up by science?
Right now, a lot of people are looking at this graph and freaking out:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Instrumental_Temperature_Record_(NASA).svg
After all, a spike like that over the course of little more than a century is clearly cause for concern.
Meanwhile, nobody bothers looking at this graph:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:EPICA_temperature_plot.svg
Where - what's that? The temperature of late seems to be increasing more slowly than it did the last time we were at this point in the cycle 200,000 years ago?
Clearly, the humans must be the cause of this slower-than-normal global warming! We must find a way to return to our normally more expeditious warming!
Sarcasm aside, you know what I think?
Trying to pick trends out of a few hundred years of a global climate that runs in 200,000 year cycles is like trying saying the world is cooling due to man's interference because it's colder on November 28th than it was on November 24th. It's poor prognostication, and it fails to take into account the entire cycle (365 days in the case of the seasonal example; 200,000 years in the case of the global climatic example).
Sam
Re remark on colonialism and evil foreigners. Ya....sure. Odd though how Canada, Australia and New Zealand are 'former colonies' and the learders don't go around torturing people and cutting up folks with machetes.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBasketcase countries are now long responsible for themselves. A dollar sent to Zimbabwe is another dollar they have to buy a bellet.
Don't you just love the word "demand" in the title of this article? I demand these nations change their culture as did China to make themselves rich enough to take of themselves. I am old enough to remember how poor China was at the end of the Maoist period and how rapidly that was turned around. The West didn't demand this of China - they did it by themselves and for themselves. Let these other beggars do the same.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYes little Johnnie, there is a Santa Claus! What a joke! Oh wait, you're serious!!! America (and most of the world's industrialized countries) have been in a long-standing recession. If our government gives poor countries money when we cannot deal with our own issues, it will only serve to prove how overwhelmingly STUPID our leaders are. Solve our own problems and make those poor, corrupt beggers deal with their own problems. Nobody except themselves caused this issue. No one would help America (or Russia or China) deal with home made problems. We should give these fools the proverbial "finger". Period.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOne further note: If we are going to fund anything it should be BIRTH CONTROL!!!!!!!! If those poorer countries would just stop f@#$%..... I mean procreating, most of these polution issues could be handled by UN mandates. Translation - if you want our money, we will control when and how it's spent. Don't like those restrictions then go begging someplace else. I don't give beggars who smell like booze a dime. But, if I see someone who is in actual need, I will empty my pockets to help. I have done it before and I will do it again.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this@StutterinSam Thank you so much for not being one of these "Chicken Little" idiots. I was under the impression that global weather was cyclical every 100,000 years. Point remains the same. I have repeatedly tried to point out that exact idea on several instances. All I get is personal attacks from the "sky is falling" crowd. The only concern that I really have is the imminent shift of our magnetic poles and the reduced effectiveness of our troposphere until the pole reversal is over with. This the first pole shift in MODERN history, so hang on, it might get bumpy. But global warming is POOP. Those who believe like to look at half truths and take data out of context to prove their points (Al Gore = collosal moron) but anyone who looks at ALL of the available information would never make such stupid ideas public unless its just another way to control the general populous like sheep.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe most dangerous tinpot Dictator wannabe is BH Obama.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFor those about to suffer the consequences of increased concentration of CO2 in the air, the global warming it induces and the meltdown of currently permanent ice it will produce, the most reasonable option may be to ask for ways of transportation to escape to higher places, be it airplanes or Cruise boats, and help to start a new life in their new homelands, otherwise they'll have no better thing to do that listening to the Johnny Cash's song: "Five Feet High and Rising". Tomorrow may be to late, it's now or never...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRight I am the buffoon. The title of the article says poorer nations, not Senegal. You go right ahead and make America and third world thug nations morally equivalent if that makes you feel better.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe fact is these nations, including Senegal are run by corrupt insane tribal like governments or simply thugs and dictators. They are poor precisely because they will not get out of pre 20th century beliefs and thinking when it comes to freedom and what rights people have. Handing these countries money to fight global warming will have no more effect than handing them money for food, for houses, for oil, for anything else all of it will fail because these countries are dysfunctional.
It does not matter how corrupt America is, we have moved our culture far enough to allow us to be producers of the world. As soon as Senegal or any other third world country wakes up and starts to move ahead(like women's rights for example) then maybe sending them cash to fight global warming will work.
The bottom line here is when you have a poor country today, a place where people have no individual rights, women are treated like cattle, slavery can and does still exist and a host of other problems of a similar nature, there is no possibly these same people who cant even respect the life of their neighbor, to turn around and start respecting the planet itself and try to save it from anything.
Try waking up geek, you ivory tower seems to be producing too much melatonin.
If I were a more cynical person I might think this was
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisa bribe to get these countries to the table at all.
Most of them have far more immediate and pressing problems than global warming but they will gladly pay
lip service as long as we send them money.
We have eliminated the wars that take millions of lifes. Our medicine saves many lifes that would normally
be terminated. If you do the math we are going to procreate ourselves off the planet. NOthing is going to
prevent the total destruction of anything natural on
the planet if we continue to reproduce with no limit to
our population. This is totally inevitable and global
warming will be the least of our problems.