Europe’s wallet shrinks, Green Fund to suffer

The Green Fund that was proposed at Copenhagen to finance climate adaptation seems to have hit two stumbling blocks. Europe’s financial crises and civil society’s claim that offers are “old wine in a new bottle” are threatening to derail the fund.

Updated on: Jun 9, 2010, 24:23:48 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, Bonn

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The Green Fund that was proposed at Copenhagen to finance climate adaptation seems to have hit two stumbling blocks. Europe’s financial crises and civil society’s claim that offers are “old wine in a new bottle” are threatening to derail the fund.

At the Bonn climate conference, none of the European countries have offered anything substantial except Sweden, which has offered a few million Euros for climate adaptation.

Saleemul Huq, of the International Institute for Environment and Development, said an agreement on adaptation is in “reasonably good shape”, but finance is proving to be a problem.

Most European nations have cited financial constraints as a reason for not managing funds for a short-term green fund of US$ 30 billion by 2012 and long-term finance of US$ 100 billion by 2020 as committed in Copenhagen in December 2009.

Germany on Monday announced its biggest domestic austerity measure since World War-II aimed at saving 19 billion euros in the current financial year. Spain has announced a five per cent cut in salaries of the government employees whereas British Prime Minister David Cameron has asked citizens to be ready for more taxes and lesser funding for public services.

Chinese chief negotiator Yu Quingtai said, “Leave alone money, Europe is not even willing to increase emission reduction targets in Copenhagen.”

The UN Secretary General’s High Level Advisory Group on Climate Financing told 185 countries attending the conference on Tuesday that the group will not recommend how much money will be available but will only suggest the possible sources for climate funding. The group will submit report before Cancun climate conference.

Indian negotiator Ajay Mathur, who also heads Bureau of Energy Efficiency, said there was a need to allocate specific funds for climate mitigation, adaptation and capacity building.

Yvo de Boer, head of UN’s convention of climate change, however, said that agreements on issues important to developing countries — such as capacity building, technology transfer — should be possible in Mexico.

Mexico not hopeful of striking deal

Mexico does not seem hopeful that the climate summit in Cancun in December will be a deal-clincher. “We know it is difficult in the process like this to reach an agreement,” said Mexico’s UN envoy Lious Alphonso during the week-long talks held at Bonn. The talks have failed to go ahead with the developing countries including India sticking to their stand that rich countries should bear the burden of fighting climate change.

Mexico has made a proposal on measurement, review and verification MRV and finance, the two biggest stumbling blocks in climate talks. On MRV, Mexico wants to adopt the peer review system of the UN’s human rights convention. On finance, Mexico has proposed a Green Fund bigger than the Copenhagen fund.

“At this pace having an agreement in South Africa (in 2011) would be difficult.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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