European Commission offers aid for developing countries on climate change

Struggling to break an impasse between the positions of the developing and developed world on climate change, the European Commission today proposed allocating up to 15 billion euros annually to assist developing countries meet targets. With less than 90 days left before world leaders gather in Copenhagen to negotiate a successor to Kyoto, concerns have been mounting that the chasm between the positions of the developed and developing countries will prove too wide to bridge. 

One key issue at the heart of the debate has been cold, hard cash. While developed countries say major emerging economies like China and India must agree to curb their emissions for any global deal to work, developing countries have been demanding that the industrialised West commit financially to help them adapt to and mitigate the effects of climate change. Global warming, they point out, is overwhelmingly the result of the accumulated emissions from the developed world. 

In the lead up to the Copenhagen talks, the issue of just how much money wealthy nations are prepared to pay poorer countries to combat global warming has proved contentious with few willing to talk numbers. 

The European Commission’s proposal is in fact the first significant document to outline hard statistics. The Commission has based its recommendations on an estimate that developing countries will need around 100 billion euros annually to fight climate change by 2020. 

Speaking at a press conference in Brussels, European Commissioner for Environment Stavros Dimas said that three main sources of finance should play a role in meeting these needs: domestic, public and private finance within developing countries which should account for 20-40 per cent of the total; the international carbon market which should take care of a further 40 per cent; and international public finance which would make up the rest. 

He stressed, however, that “international public finance should be provided not only by industrialised countries but also by economically more advanced developing nations”. This phrasing potentially brings China and even India into the proposed funding equation. 

The commissioner proposed that the EU pay between 10 and 30 per cent of the global total of the international public finance part of the requisite financing, which would amount to between 2 billion euros and 15 billion euros a year by 2020. The precise amount finally decided upon would depend on the relative weight accorded to two principles: the ability of a country to pay and its responsibility for emissions. 

The figures set out by the Commission are only a blueprint which must be discussed by the European Council when it meets next month. Disagreements between the 27 members of the EU over commitments entailed in the draft proposal are widely expected to arise. 

Moreover, even the EU were to agree to the maximum proposed 15 billion euros per year figure, that amount is only a fraction of other estimates for how much the ultimate climate change bill for developing countries is likely to be. China, for example, has put the cost of reducing its own emissions alone at 302 billion euros annually within 20 years. 

There are also concerns that the proposal includes language which suggests the EU could use some of the future development aid it has already promised for poor countries as part of its climate change contribution. 

Nonetheless, despite scepticism that the Commission’s proposals were far from ambitious enough to secure a breakthrough in negotiations, Dimas himself made the bold claim of a 100 per cent chance of success in securing a deal in Copenhagen. 

“There is no alternative to a global agreement on fighting climate change, so the chances of securing a deal at a meeting in Copenhagen later this year are 100 per cent,” he said.