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Financing for Developing Countries: the Gordian Knot of Climate Change Negotiations?
This is not exactly news – European Union Member States disagree over the financing for developing countries as part of the overall climate change strategy. There is disagreement on everything – the scale of financing, the start of financing assistance, etc.
But wait – it appears that there is not a single official document issued by the EU with reliable and verifiable information on the total level of financial support to developing countries for climate change mitigation and adaptation purposes provided by the Union and its Member States to-date.
Not that the EU has not done anything – we’ve probably done more than anyone else. However, it is very difficult to expect any progress in the negotiations in Copenhagen when the Union itself does not have a common approach to climate change financing for the developing countries.
It is clear – we need to support adaptation and mitigation in the developing countries. One of the most important issues is to provide funding for new, more expensive, climate-friendly technologies. Another equally important element is financing adaptation measures that are synchronized with development strategies and take into account climate change impacts for the World’s poorest.
It never hurts to remind that climate change demands action that is both global and collective. Let us not build alliances that simply do not work.
This post is part of the Blog Action Day campaign.
Comments
Vihar, there’s a lot of talk going around about rich countries financing alternative technologies in developing countries. However, I didn’t get very far when I tried to find out what exactly these “alternate technologies” were. The most talked about “alternate technology” was the industrial scrubber that is supposed to convert polluting gasses emitted from industries into something less harmful (but nevertheless harmful). Apart from scrubbers the rest of the so called alternatives are known to be non-practical.
I fear the so called funding for “alternate technologies” will turn out to be just another means of subjugating the developing countries.
I shudder to think what will happen when the developing countries realize the so called alternatives do not work or are not practical.
No doubt we desperately need the climate talks to succeed but personally, I feel it would be okay to delay them a bit so we can get answers to some hard questions. We should not be throwing good money in bad times chasing some white elephant just so the current crop of leaders can claim to have achieved something.
Miki, we are probably talking about different things. Climate-friendly technologies should mean technologies that have lower carbon footprint (like efficient biomass boilers or energy-efficient equipment). Such technologies already exist, but their cost is prohibitive for many in the developing countries.
One of the sub-issues is the free provision of intellectual property rights for such technologies; there is some serious debate on that: http://www.iisd.org/pdf/2008/cph_trade_climate_tech_transfer_ipr.pdf
We must negotiate what technologies are good for them ...
They have also technologies that we can buy: don’t forget it!
I think about buildings.