Funding EU and Steadfast U.S

Funding EU and Steadfast U.S
(Madan Menon Thottasseri)
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At Brussels the EU leaders resolved to create corpus of 2.4 billion euroes ($3.5 billion) each year a total of $10.50 billion within a period of next three years to contribute poor nations in their task of surmounting adverse effects of global warming and win for a deal at Copenhagen. The EU’s initiative should facilitate for reaching an internationally acceptable accord.

In fact developing world expect EU and powerful nations to commit for providing long-term financing of more than $100 billion each year by the end of the next decade. EU Brussels kept mum and unanswered the call from developing nations.

Finance has appeared as a hesitant wedge to the global climate agreement in Copenhagen to replace the Kyoto Protocol, the U.N.’s main tool for fighting global warming. The Kyoto agreement expires in 2012.

Brussels propelled for funding when a group of negotiators in Copenhagen made a six-page informal outline (framework) of a new climate agreement sought to pull together a growing stream of conflicting proposals from nations involved in the climate-treaty talks.

The outline calls for wealthy nations to commit themselves to sharp reductions in greenhouse-gas emissions in the next decade, and for all nations to seek jointly to nearly eliminate the emissions by 2050.

But the disagreements on vital numbers remained wide, and sections of the outline concerning some contested issues were left entirely blank. Among the sidestepped items were any long-term goals for financing the deal and provisions for how trade rules might be employed. Todd Stern, the top American negotiator was apprehensive and skeptical while U.S cannot view it as an acceptable one which is deficient in any language requiring emerging economic powers like China and India to take concrete steps to curb emissions.

Todd Stern’s point is that the United States has to remain steadfast in demanding such a commitment, given that nearly all of the future increase in emissions of greenhouse gases in the coming decades is anticipated to come from China and India. Thus the draft plan has to be balanced as a whole with due application of futuristic thinking. I think that India and China have to seriously take this point and can address it by relaxing the unbending attitude to some extent.
Stern’s still strikes a note of optimism when he expressed that after months of one-on-one discussions with counterparts from China, he was confident that there was language we could both agree to, if we can get to the serious stage.

Stern made his comments an hour after Chinese vice foreign minister He Yafei said America's top climate negotiator was either lacking "common sense" or being "extremely irresponsible" for saying earlier in the week that the United States would not help China financially to cope with global warming.

With the future economic trajectory of the world's major powers at stake, fault lines have erupted both within the developing world and between the industrial world and emerging economies.

The current battle is as much about saving individual economies as saving the planet, with China and the United States feuding over their respective obligations while poorer nations insist that the world's two dozen most influential countries are ignoring the scientific imperative to take bolder action.

Chancellor Angela Merkel commented that EU is more than ready to assume the share of responsibility. Copenhagen is at stake for developing nations threatened by climate change and wealthier-developed nations seek to remold the techniques in operation and consumption of energy. The British Prime Minister Gorden Brown emphasized this when he said “ few moments in history when nations are summoned to common decisions that will reshape the lives of men and women potentially for generations to come.”

In Copenhagen, some of the smallest and most vulnerable countries — island states facing the prospect of centuries of rising seas in a warming world fired off a warning shot in the form of a new draft text of their own.

They called for the proposed ceiling for a rise in global temperature accepted by most nations to be lowered by 0.5 degrees Celsius.

The world’s industrialized countries and emerging economic powers have pledged over the past year to work to limit warming to less than 2 degrees Celsius above where temperatures stood in the 1800s. That translates roughly into a rise of no more than 1.3 degrees Fahrenheit from today’s average global temperature of about 59 degrees.

But given projections for greenhouse gas emissions and what is known about how the gases trap heat, even that target will be tough to reach, many climate scientists say.
Money is central to the demands by poor nations. Most African countries and small island states have demanded aid as a condition for signing a new pact to replace the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.

The European Union has led efforts to raise money for what is known as a fast-start fund, with its contributions meant to be joined by donations from other advanced nations, including the United States. But it is not clear if or when the money will be available.

The Obama administration has asked Congress for $1.2 billion in financing for adaptation, technology transfer and clean-energy projects in the developing world. But Congress has not yet acted on the request.

The American contribution could come from a government auction of emissions permits as part of a ‘Cap and Trade’ system for limiting emissions by American industries. But legislation on such a system still is stuck in the Senate.

In Brussels, Merkel warned on Friday that long-term financing for developing countries would be crucial to any deal next week. She had said “This is the biggest headache to me” and suggested that the United States needed to make a commitment to long-term financing before the European Union clarified how much it would put on the table.

Gorden Brown and Nicolas Sarkozy had supported using “innovative financing mechanisms,” like a tax on global financial transactions, to help developing countries transform their energy systems.

Advocacy groups and some environmental campaigners condemned the pledges in Brussels as inadequate. Tim Gore, a climate change advisor for Oxfam, a group that fights poverty, said the offer was “mostly a recycling of past promises and payments that have already been made,” and would siphon off funds from areas other than climate protection.

Fredrik Reinfeldt, the Swedish prime minister, acknowledged that the pledges were “a combination of new and old resources.”

Some of the countries most vulnerable to the impact of climate change indicated they would continue to push for a legally binding treaty in Copenhagen, although most of the major participants say the talks will produce a political deal at best. The Alliance of Small Island States, which has 43 members, produced a 24-page draft treaty proposal in the early morning on Friday December 11, 2009.

Artur Runge-Metzger, who heads international climate negotiations on behalf of the European Commission, said the push by small island nations has "put political pressure on the entire political process," in part because they are now unified and demanding action from emerging economies such as China and India.

The talks took on new urgency as delegates focused on the fact that they must resolve most of the outstanding issues before the heads of government arrive to strike a deal. High-level officials such as Indian environment minister Jairam Ramesh and the Chinese vice minister stepped off planes and raced through the Bella Center's halls to closed-door meetings and news conferences so they could stake out claims that will be arbitrated over the next week.

The sheer sprawl of the gathering -- where 13,000 people move in and out of the convention center each day, guitar-playing activists put on nightly shows mocking the countries they think are selling out, and draft proposals are passed hand-to-hand on paper rather than via e-mail -- poses a challenge.

Over the weekend, attention is expected to shift back to Copenhagen, where environment ministers are to hold negotiations. Police officers there have begun bracing for several planned protests. On Friday December 11, 2009 at least 76 protesters were arrested in various parts of the city center after signaling an intention to disrupt business at the sites of several international corporations in Copenhagen, including the shipping giant Maersk, McDonald’s and other firms.
Chants of “our climate is not your business!” could be heard as groups of demonstrators made their way through the streets, many of them carrying maps and instructions about which businesses to make targets.

On Saturday December 12, 2009, a much larger demonstration is planned by a broad coalition of organizations. Protesters are expected to march along an approved route from the Parliament to the Bella Center, where thousands of negotiators and delegates are gathered.
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