Without additionality of climate funds, Copenhagen adds up to nothing
As world leaders fly home from the climate change summit, the agreement reached in Copenhagen could add up to nothing unless the funding offered is not double counted from existing aid promises.
Late last night an agreement was brokered by the US, China, South Africa, India and Brazil. This included $10bn a year in so called ‘fast track’ financing for the next 3 years and $100bn a year by 2020 for poor countries to cope with climate change. But currently these sums will largely be subtracted from promised resources to help these same countries fight poverty.
ONE has been campaigning hard against this dangerous double counting, which undermines both sustainable international development and a good global deal on climate change. Last week we handed over a petition from more than 80,000 ONE members to the Danish government, as chair of the summit, and the US delegation. We called on them to ensure that new funding is additional to existing and promised aid flows and that development promises are kept in full.
Here’s what ONE’s Executive Director Jamie Drummond had to say on the agreement that was reached last night:
“Climate change is putting additional stress on poor countries – which is why they need additional funds to cope with it – on top of existing and promised aid levels.
Promises of aid made by the G8 in Gleneagles in 2005 must not be lost in Copenhagen. Without a clear commitment that these climate funds are additional, the dollar amounts are next to meaningless.
This debate over ‘additionality’ might seem arcane, but within the details lie billions of dollars – and very real impacts on millions of lives. Without this additionality, Copenhagen adds up to nothing.
It is not clear how a cap on 2 degrees will be achieved, but it is very clear that much more can and must be done, including harnessing the potential of African and other developing countries to be renewable energy hubs and help capture carbon through growing trees.”
ONE supports the African proposal for an interim target of US$50bn by 2015 on top of existing and promised aid to help the poorest countries – many of them in Africa – with pressing adaptation needs. The “Copenhagen Accord” mentions a High Level Panel to assess how alternative sources of funding can contribute to raising genuinely additional funds.
This urgent High Level Task Force should be convened immediately to look into alternative sources of climate finance to complement additional public funding from rich countries. These sources could include: revenue from aviation and shipping, international auctioning of emissions allowances, a financial transactions tax and the proposal to use the IMF’s own currency, known as Special Drawing Rights. The need for accountability and transparency for these new funds is also paramount.
With the agreement in Copenhagen weaker than we hoped, we now know we have much more work ahead of us.
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December 20, 2009 at 10:30 am
In light of the failure in Copenhagen to get a signed treaty to halt global warming, it is time to call on the rock icons in the world to help. It’s time for them to organize a world wide concert like Live Aid to education the world about how dire the situation is, and to raise the needed money to actually stop the increased emissions of CO2 in the world. We need people like Bob Geldof and the Bono to spearhead this movement.
December 20, 2009 at 4:03 pm
Thank You, Jamie Drummond, for speaking the truth regarding the “outcomes” of the Copenhagen Summit. As always, I am impressed with your clear thinking and strong voice for the world’s poor.
Without actual monies committed to fight climate change & without actual deadlines to meet proposed carbon emission targets, the results of this summit fall way too short of the MINIMUM levels needed to prevent disasters from occurring in the world’s poorest countries due to climate change.
This puts the world’s poor in the most precarious situation for their futures & we, AS ONE, must redouble our efforts to link climate change reduction with the end of extreme poverty in our world. The two issues are inextricably linked.
I remain….ALWAYS FOREVER, ONE – debbie
http://www.mpwn-uganda.org
January 11, 2010 at 5:04 pm
Cancel the Copenhagen Climate Summit!
by Helga Zepp-LaRouche
This statement was released by the Civil Rights Solidarity Movement (BüSo), a German political party, on Nov. 27, and has been translated from German.
The Climate Summit in Copenhagen, which is to take place from Dec. 6 to 18, and in which 193 nations, approximately 65 heads of government, and up to 20,000 delegates are to participate, is based on a gigantic fraud, and must immediately be cancelled—and not only to save the substantial expenses for this neo-malthusian propaganda event, whose real aim consists in establishing a de facto world government.
After almost 1,000 scientists have recently distanced themselves from the thesis of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concerning allegedly anthropogenic global warming, now the scandalous manipulations that hackers have unearthed in the e-mail communications of “scientists” of the Climate Research Unit (CRU) of East Anglia University in Great Britain, are the final proof of the climate fraud—in case anyone still needed it.
In reality, the raw, unalterated data from long-term weather stations show little or no change during the last 150 years. Half of the stations show a slight cooling, and global cooling has been occurring for around ten years. So what is behind this enormously expensive campaign?
The answer is clear: Apart from all sorts of profiteers, who see the C02 emissions trade as a new opportunity for ripping off the population, it is essentially the policy of the British Empire, or, more precisely, of Prince Philip, who has repeatedly said publicly that he wants to be reincarnated as a virus, so as to more effectively contribute to population reduction. On Nov. 12, the CEO of Prince Philip’s World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) told reporters: “We believe it fundamental for the President to go to Copenhagen, to look other leaders in the eye, convey our commitment as a country, and secure theirs.” And promptly Obama announced, contrary to earlier statements, that he would be in Copenhagen on Dec. 9.
Moreover, it is monstrous that an official UN organization, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, and the Danish government, want to place the question of population reduction officially on the agenda.
According to the Danish newspaper Berlinske Tidende, Danish Development Minister Ulla Toerness has admitted the controversial character of this proposal, which in several nations is still considered a huge taboo. But since, she says, there’s a connection between population growth and climate change, this proposal also has the complete support of the Danish Prime Minister.
The British organization Optimum Population Trust (OPT), which crusades for global population reduction, asserts in a study that one of the best opportunities for combatting so-called “global warming,” consists in preventing births, because preventing the birth of new “polluters” would be a far cheaper means to prevent “climate catastrophe,” than acquiring renewable energy sources. According to the study, by spending £200 trillion, we could prevent a half-billion births and thus the emission of 24 billion tons of CO2, over the next 40 years.
Also revealing, is the fact that according to Forbes magazine, the “14 richest men in the world” (who owe their wealth not least to the casino economy) met back on May 5 of this year at the home of the president of the private Rockefeller University. Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Michael Bloomberg, George Soros, Peter Petersen, David Rockefeller, Jr., and the other participants in this illustrious gathering agreed that the problem of population growth poses the worst environmental, social, and industrial threat.
January 23, 2010 at 7:29 pm
Helga Zepp-LaRouche,
The emails exposed the human side of some scientists, who will now be punished.
The general IPCC scientific conclusions about climate disruption from levels of CO2 never before reached are irrefutable. The debate is about exactly how fast, how much of the land will be submerged, desertified, or otherwise changed.
The level of CO2 has been reached by the burning of fossil fuels used to achieve both our current level of technology and of consumerism.
Now we (humankind) need to work together to decide how to control/apportion how much CO2 we want in our world. Then we need to figure out how to pay for the changes.
I think that the education of women around the world is a goal that will help achieve all of the issues that you raise.
January 25, 2010 at 1:39 am
Was great to see Schwarzenegger and Villaraigosa represent California at Copenhagen.
January 29, 2010 at 11:59 am
we would to have unity in the whole and dismiss poverty and hatred amongst our nation. unity forever.
March 8, 2010 at 8:02 pm
web1o.ne.org, how do you do it?