Copenhagen Day Five: Europe pledges, but not enough say poorer nations
Sue Wheat
11th December 2009
On day five of the UN talks in Copenhagen, it was the European Union’s opportunity to show leadership on climate change and present a united front – and it appeared to pull it off, promising in the end £6.5 billion (€7.2 billion) over the next three years in aid to poorer nations to help fight climate change after banging heads together at an EU summit in Brussels.
Britain came out on top, with Gordon Brown offering up no less than £1.5 billion over three years – Europe’s biggest pledge. France and Germany were close behind, each offering to put £1.2 billion into the European fund.
In a press conference following the summit, Brown said the EU had also offered to cut greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 30 per cent by 2020 if other countries were willing to commit to ambitious reductions at the Copenhagen climate conference.
“Britain’s contribution is one that we are proud we are making, and that is $800 million or £500 million a year. That makes it possible for the poorest countries to come to the table knowing that they can mitigate carbon emissions and adapt to climate change,” said the Prime Minister.
Brown said he and other EU leaders would do “everything in our power” to secure an ambitious deal at the UN summit in Copenhagen and it certainly seemed to satisfy UN climate chief Yvo de Boer, who described the billions pledged as “hugely encouraging” for the climate talks.
The EU funding amounts to a third of the total £18 billion that the UN estimates is needed over the next three years to tackle climate change. Negotiations towards a global deal on climate change have been held back over the question of who is going to finance it and by how much.
But the EU’s financial pledge didn’t satisfy everyone, nor did its conditional offer to cut emissions by 30 per cent.
Leaders of poorer nations and some aid agencies described the sum offered by the EU as inadequate and there was concern the money would be diverted from overseas development aid.
“Their pledge does not address financing in its totality. We want to know where the money is coming from. Is it overseas development aid or not?” questioned Lumumba Stanislaus-Kaw Di-Aping, representing the G77 bloc of developing nations and China at the Copenhagen talks.
Friends of the Earth, meanwhile, described the EU’s position on emission cuts as “unacceptable”.
"Europe has been pumping out carbon with impunity for hundreds of years, so they need to be the ones leading the world out of the climate crisis,” said FoE head of Climate Change Mike Childs. "Their current plan to cut emissions by just 30 per cent, and only if others act too, is both inadequate and riddled with the con of offsetting - which renders it even weaker.”
Meanwhile, on day five of the Copenhagen conference a UN working group produced the first official draft for a global climate deal.
However, it was clear the six-page text – which may form the basis of a replacement deal for the Kyoto Protocol when it expires in 2012 – still had a long way to go. Most of the figures are not yet agreed upon and seem to vary widely.
The draft states that emissions should be halved worldwide by 2050 compared to 1990 levels, but it also suggests 80 percent and 95 per cent reductions by that year could be a goal. As for an interim target by 2020, the text says developed countries will have to cut their greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 by between 25 per cent and 45 per cent compared to 1990 levels.
And the new draft also makes mention of a figure of 1.5 degrees Celsius as a possible alternative goal to the two degrees that has been widely suggested as feasible for the world to keep within. Some of the most vulnerable nations to the effects of climate change have been calling for 1.5 degrees goal to be set, but it is viewed as hugely ambitious to achieve and therefore to get agreement on.