Jun.07, 2010

Developed countries have been accused of not being sincere with their climate funding commitments.

A non-governmental organisation (NGO), Friends of the Earth International (FoI), has alleged at the ongoing United Nations Climate Talks in Bonn that much of the $30 billion fast-start fund promised is recycled aid money already committed for essential programmes in the developing world.

Describing the money as ‘grossly inadequate,’ the group urged the countries to alter their plans over climate funding to prevent a repeat of the fallout from Copenhagen. FoI chair, Nnimmo Bassey, said, “It seems developed countries are finally taking recycling seriously; they are recycling aid money and calling it ‘fresh’ money. But the world will not be fooled. Laundering aid money for climate change does not show leadership, it shows contempt.

“Having done the most to cause climate change, developed nations are morally and legally obliged to support the additional cost in developing countries for adaptation measures and for clean renewable technology.”

Officials of Tuvalu, a small island nation severely threatened by climate change, submitted that the Copenhagen Accord’s Green Fund was being used for coercive political purpose to get support for the weak provisions of the Accord. Along with some other developing countries, they expressed outrage over rich countries’ attempts to count existing commitments as new climate money, in contravention of agreed criterion of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

Alleging that rich nations were attempting to place control of climate funds with the World Bank, the FoI called for the establishment of a new global climate fund under the full authority of the UNFCCC, based on principles of equity and environmental integrity to support the aims of communities around the world.

Asad Rehman of the FoI in the United Kingdom stated, “The motivation of the United States and other developed countries is clear - they want the World Bank to call the shots. This is unacceptable. The World Bank is an undemocratic discredited institution that is far adept at causing climate change than preventing it.

The World Bank is the number one lender to environmentally and socially destructive projects around the globe, ranging from fossil fuel lending to subsiding deforestation.

 Most recently, it approved a new loan for South Africa to build the world’s 4th largest coal plant, described by South African civil society as an environmental and social disaster.”

Karen Orenstein of the FoI in the US noted, “People in developing countries are already being forced to cope with the impacts of climate population that the World Bank is causing, while efforts to reduce poverty - which the Bank purports to support - are undercut by the climate crisis. The best thing the World Bank can do is no harm in the first place. It must get out of the business of climate pollution.”

In a related development, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has urged delegates to the ongoing climate talks to establish a post-2012 global climate change regime. The organisation wants parties to strive to agree on the building blocks for a deal at the next UNFCCC Summit in Cancun in Mexico , this year.