Gordon Brown has been co-chairing the first meeting of the High Level Advisory Group on Climate Finance in Downing Street today – what one campaign group characterised as the Prime Minister’s “last chance to make progress in tackling climate change before the General Election”.
The purpose of the
climate finance advisory group is to look at how the world willdeliver on its commitment to provide $100 billion (£66 billion) of public and private
finance a year by 2020, as promised under the
Copenhagen Accord last December.
The 19-member group, from both developed and developing countries, was announced by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon last month. It is charged with mobilising financial support to help developing countries fight climate change.
Co-chaired by the UK Prime Minister and his Ethiopian counterpart Meles Zenawi, today’s inaugural meeting involved two other heads of government, two
finance ministers, Barack Obama’s chief economic adviser Larry Summers, and other key figures such as George Soros and Nick Stern.
Commenting ahead of the meeting, international aid agency Oxfam said it was important that it made real progress in identifying the best sources of finance to help governments in poor countries tackle climate change.
"Real chance" to tackle climate change“Gordon Brown has a real chance to move the world closer towards tackling climate change,” said campaigns and policy director Phil Bloomer.
“He must push the group towards making clear recommendations in time for [the November climate conference in] Mexico so that the most effective ways to generate funds are developed to help the millions of people urgently needing support.”
WWF calls for new innovative sources of finance Conservation and campaign group WWF also recognised the potential for today’s meeting to make real progress on the financing issue, expressing the hope that the meeting would look at the full range of options on new and
innovative sources of finance.
It said these would include: levies on
aviation and maritime bunker fuels; auctioning of
carbon permits for
shipping, aviation and other sectors: and international financial transaction taxes or other instruments.
WWF also believes it is critical that climate finance is additional, not alternative, to Overseas Development Aid (ODA) commitments and that the $100 billion (£66 billion) proposed for long term climate financing is viewed as an initial guiding figure. It says the estimated mitigation and adaptation costs are expected to extend up to or beyond $200 billion (£132 billion) by 2020.
Kim Carstensen, leader of WWF Global Climate Initiative appeared to have high hopes for what today’s meeting could deliver: “This high level group can contribute a great deal to creating the conditions for ambitious global action on climate change, and rebuilding trust in the climate negotiation process, particularly between developed and developing countries.”
Energy and Climate Change Secretary Ed Miliband took a similarly positive line: “We’ve got to dust ourselves down and kick-start efforts to get a global deal, get the climate finance flowing and make sure the cuts promised by countries happen.”
In support of this, the Government has also launched today a new action plan on international climate change, proposing actions it believes are necessary to get a legally binding global treaty.
Among other things, the Government wants to see a strengthening of the UN decision-making process that was so frustrated at Copenhagen, and supports the European Commission’s work to identify the measures necessary to implement a 30 per cent emissions target for EU countries.
The Government also today published plans on how it will address the challenge of climate change in the UK. The Carbon Reduction Delivery and Adaptation Plans detail each Government department’s commitment to minimise the damage of climate change, by reducing emissions.
