World Leaders cut up cheques in Barcelona (Oxfam Int’l)

Barcelona is the last official round of negotiations before a UN deal is signed in Copenhagen at the end of the year.

A widely accepted target for financial aid calls on the countries which created the climate crisis, to provide at least $150 billion per year to help poor countries reduce their emissions and adapt to a changing climate.  Poor countries fear that carbon-emitting countries will try to substitute funds required for Climate Change adaptation as part of the 0.7 per cent of national income already requested/committed to overseas aid.

The European Union announced an agreement to provide up to €100 billion a year to fund climate efforts in developing countries, but failed to commit the EU to any specific sums, delaying their decision until after December’s UN conference in Copenhagen.  In short, the EU is waiting to hear commitments from North America and other countries that will influence their final contribution to poor countries.

Millions of poor people around the world are already struggling to cope with the effects of climate change and delay in negotiating the financing of Climate Change is catching up to carbon emitting nations whose responsibility it will ultimately be to pay the financial cost of mitigation and adaptation to climate change conditions.

What Canadian delegation said:

At an informal briefing on mitigation of climate impacts Canada suggested that losses or damages due to climate change should not be addressed as part of the objectives on adaptation.

“would not envisage loss and damage [due to climate change impacts] being addressed as part of the objectives on adaptation”

Perhaps it would be better if Canada and other major emitters waited for a world court to find us at fault for knowingly contributing to damage and destruction around the world for doing so little to combat climate change.

With the African nations walking out of negotiations and G77 supporting them there has been an effort to ratchet up negotiations and move the Cop15 process forward.

Will Canada shine its shoes and start offering real solutions or continue to stall the process?

“A Copenhagen Agreement that does not recognize that such impacts exist and that does not include resolute provisions to address these impacts would mean that the world’s most vulnerable people, namely those for which adaptation funding is not available, would be left out of the agreement,” said Antonio Hill from Oxfam International.