BASIC countries seek $30-bn green fund

The BASIC group of countries, comprising Brazil, South Africa, India and China, has sought a $30-billion fund to help developing countries battle climate change and related initiatives. Reiterating there should be a road map for fund-raising, the group members, who held a ministerial-level meeting on climate change here, urged developed countries to contribute their share to the corpus.

The fund should have a corpus of around $30 billion and developed countries have already committed to contribute. The fund currently has only around $7 billion, officials said today. “The meeting stressed there should be a clear road map to raise finance (short and long-term). Capitalisation of the fund is important,” Environment Minister Jayanthi Natarajan told reporters after the meeting.
 

The group has also urged developed countries to increase their level of mitigation, noting that the level is not adequate to achieve major results. The Durban conference had set a goal to bring down emissions in developed countries by 25-40 per cent below the levels of 1990, to be achieved by 2020. The current commitments for reduction are not up to the required mark.

The environment ministry had earlier announced the important issues to be discussed at the BASIC ministers’ meeting included principles under the Durban Platform and the role and relevance of independent international initiatives. Various international groups such as G77 could together urge the developed nations to bring down their emissions, said Natarajan.

Funding is very important to achieve the goals and the nations have to look at various options, said Xie Zhenhua, vice-chairman, National Development and Reform Commission, China. The plans are to collect fund from various sources and channel it through the Green Climate Fund, said Alfred Wills, chief negotiator, department of environmental affairs, South Africa.

The deliberations in the 14th BASIC meeting are also expected to help India and other BASIC countries in formulating their approach to the future environmental issues and help plan an ambitious and equitable architecture for post 2020 arrangements.

India, along with the like-minded developing countries, are expected to meet in Geneva on February 27 and 28 to review the decisions at Doha and plan the future steps.