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US Threatens to Undermine Funding for Climate Change Adaptation    [
Poor Hit Hardest by Climate Change    [

    Hard Choices on Climate Can Wait for Next President, Aides Indicate
    By Juliet Eilperin
    The Washington Post

    Wednesday 12 December 2007

    Bali, Indonesia - U.S. officials at U.N. climate negotiations here said Tuesday that they would not embrace any overall binding goals for cutting global greenhouse gas emissions before President Bush leaves office, essentially putting off specific U.S. commitments until a new administration assumes power in 2009, according to several participants.

    In closed-door meetings, senior U.S. climate negotiator Harlan L. Watson said the administration considers several aspects of a draft resolution circulated by U.N. officials unacceptable, according to an administration official and other negotiators. Watson specifically objected to language calling for a halt in the growth of worldwide emissions within 10 to 15 years, to be followed by measures that by 2050 would drive emissions down to less than half the 2000 levels.

    The administration also suggested eliminating language in the draft calling for "sufficient, predictable, additional and sustainable financial resources" to help poor nations adapt to climate change, on the grounds that it is vague.

    "We've been very pro-active, we've been very collaborative, very constructive," said James L. Connaughton, who chairs the White House Council on Environmental Quality and is in Bali this week to participate in the talks. "What we're looking for is a broad negotiating agenda in a road map so we can cover a range of topics the president articulated earlier this year" on climate change.

    Several environmental activists said that although the administration's position is somewhat more flexible now than it was two years ago - when it essentially rejected the idea of conducting any formal dialogue on replacing the 1997 Kyoto Protocol on climate with a new binding agreement-its stance leaves all tough decisions on how to address global warming up to the next president. In addition, they warned that the approach U.S. officials are taking could further alienate rapidly industrializing nations such as China, India and Brazil, which are seeking financial incentives to cut their emissions.

    "The United States once again can't help itself from playing games, and it's a high-stakes game," said Kevin Knobloch, president of the advocacy group Union of Concerned Scientists, who was to meet with Connaughton along with other environmental leaders on Wednesday morning. "They're going to play this game to the bitter end."

    The U.S. position is expected to hold sway here not only because the United States plays such an important role on the world stage, but because negotiators are fashioning a consensus document that needs to be approved unanimously by the nearly 190 participating countries.

    In fact, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon said in a press conference with reporters Wednesday afternoon that the U.S. opposition to language calling for industrialized countries to reduce emissions between 25 and 40 percent by 2020 had effectively taken the question of specific pollution cuts off the table at the Bali conference.

    "Practically speaking, this will have to be negotiated down the road," Ki-Moon said, adding that the language reflected the current scientific consensus on climate change. "There needs to be a target, whether it's a short term, medium or long-term" goal.

    Connaughton said the administration's opposition to specific targets, such as the U.N. draft's call for an emissions cut of between 25 and 40 percent by 2020, reflects the concerns of "many countries" that some nations are trying to force a specific outcome for the talks before they actually begin. "It's hard to wrap up a negotiation the day you start it," he said, adding that Bush plans to spend the next year working with leaders of other major economies to determine a long-term goal for cutting emissions worldwide.

    The United States, along with Russia and Japan, is hoping to substitute less specific language stating that, in light of this year's report by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, "an effective response to unequivocal scientific evidence . . . will require enhanced national efforts and joint action by all countries aimed at deeper global reductions of greenhouse gas emissions."

    Despite that endorsement of the IPCC, which this week received the Nobel Peace Prize along with former vice president Al Gore, administration officials also opposed a proposal to ask the scientists for an updated report before negotiators meet in 2009 to develop a new global climate pact.

    "That's a huge amount of work for the IPCC to do, and they've already done great work," Connaughton said. "We should declare the IPCC a success and move forward with putting together an aggressive" climate agreement.

    Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, the top science adviser to German Chancellor Angela Merkel and an IPCC contributor, said in an interview that he did not understand how the United States can praise the IPCC "and when it comes to something like this, block it." Schellnhuber, who is participating in the negotiations, added that if the administration succeeds in taking the specifics out of the Bali text, "it is just ignoring" the scientific evidence. "An agreement on nothing is not a good agreement," he said.

    While part of the debate here focused on how industrialized nations will address their carbon emissions over the next several years, negotiators were also exploring how to incorporate major emitters from the developing world and the world's most vulnerable nations in the next agreement. China, for instance, is asking industrialized countries to provide more money to ease the transfer of clean energy technology overseas, while poor nations whose deforestation is accelerating global warming are seeking financial compensation for protecting their remaining forests.

    While the United States endorses both of these goals in principle, it has balked at specifying how much money developed countries should contribute to such efforts.

    Blairo Borges Maggi, governor of the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso, said regions like his need "an insurance policy" to ensure that the 20 percent of Brazil's forests that are unprotected will remain standing.

    "It seems like it's a proposal that everyone likes in theory, but in practice, when it's time to put your hand in your pocket, nobody wants to," said Borges Maggi, shoving his hand in his pants pocket as if to pull out money.

    David Waskow, of the humanitarian group Oxfam America, said U.S. resistance to articulating how much money industrialized nations could provide to help poor nations adapt to a warming world is "in subtle ways, creating trouble for that global deal. . . . If this deal is going to come together, these concerns about equity have to be addressed."

    David Doniger, climate center policy director at the advocacy group Natural Resources Defense Council, said if the administration succeeds in deferring specifics about curbing emissions until early 2009, negotiators might still be able to forge an agreement that year to follow the Kyoto agreement, which expires in 2012, but it would be hard.

    "It can be done," he said. "But it's going to be a very busy year."

    Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), who came to the Bali talks for a day-and-a-half this week, said he believes that the administration wants "a document that keeps the process moving," but that delegates are looking for more concrete leadership from nations such as the United States and China.

    "There's a question mark of how long is it going to take the bigfoots to step forward and do what they need to do, or will that happen in 2009 with the right leader?" Kerry said. "You need to believe in this issue. You can't just do it on the side because it's an obligation that somebody throws at you. This has to become a crusade, a passion, a monumental undertaking."

 

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    US Threatens to Undermine Funding for Climate Change Adaptation
    Oxfam

    Tuesday 11 December 2007

    Washington - United States negotiators have objected to language in the draft Bali Roadmap text on "sufficient, predictable, additional, and sustainable" adaptation funding for vulnerable countries.

    This US position is shocking and shows a dramatic disregard for the world's vulnerable and poor who are bearing the brunt of climate change. The US approach is to undermine progress on funding for developing countries in the Bali Roadmap which sets the framework for negotiations on climate change over the next two years.

    Now, the latest draft of the Bali Roadmap text strips out that language, undermining negotiations and condemning poor and vulnerable people to deepening poverty.

    The need for adequate and rapidly scaled up sources of adaptation funding is clear. The World Bank has estimated the annual needs of developing countries to adapt to climate change is up to $40 billion, Oxfam puts this figure at a minimum of $50 billion annually, while the UN Development Program said last week that the costs are $86 billion a year.

    Despite being the world's largest historical emitter of global greenhouse gases, the US has contributed exactly US$0 to the multilateral funds created under the UNFCCC.

    Now, US negotiators are saying "NO" to the idea that it's time for developed countries to fulfill their commitments under the UNFCCC by making sure that developing countries receive adequate funding.

    We join forces to say "NO" to the US position, which undermines an overall deal in Bali, and we instead call on governments to strengthen the Bali Roadmap text in the next day by ensuring it:

    Includes "sufficient, predictable, additional and sustainable" funding;

    Provides for new and rapidly scaled up funding sources; and

    Creates binding commitments for developed countries to provide adaptation funding.

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    Joint statement by: Oxfam International * CARE International * ActionAid International * Tearfund * Friends of the Earth International * Practical Action.

 

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    Poor Hit Hardest by Climate Change
    The Associated Press

    Wednesday 12 December 2007

    Bali, Indonesia - Surrounded by rising seas and short of water, the glitzy city state of Singapore has built one of the world's largest desalination plants and is paying Dutch experts tens of millions of dollars to devise ways to protect their island.

    Bangladesh, meanwhile, is digging out from a cyclone that killed at least 3,200 and left millions homeless. The impoverished country wants to build up its coastlines to ward off the potentially devastating impacts of global warming, but has no money.

    The disparities between the rich and poor in adapting to encroaching oceans and the floods and droughts that are expected to worsen with rising temperatures have dominated the U.N. climate conference on Indonesia's resort island of Bali.

    Many delegates touched Wednesday on the inequalities in both the levels of assistance and impacts of climate change when they spoke at the opening of high-level talks.

    The haves - which pump the lion's share of pollutants into the atmosphere - are arguing about emission targets and high-tech solutions. The have-nots - which contribute little to global warming but are disproportionately among the victims - need tens of billions of dollars to save their sinking islands, to help farmers adapt and to relocate those in the path of destruction.

    "The issue of equity is crucial. Climate affects us all, but does not affect us all equally," U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told delegates. "Those who are least able to cope are being hit hardest. Those who have done the least to cause the problem bear the gravest consequences."

    The United Nations Development Program says 98 percent of the 262 million people hit by disasters from 2000 to 2004 came from impoverished countries, while the money to prevent disasters in the United Kingdom alone was six times what was spent in all poor countries.

    The number of people affected by natural disasters has quadrupled over the past two decades - from famines in Africa to floods in South Asia, according to Oxfam International, though it is not clear how much of that is due to global warming.

    But with scientists predicting that temperatures could rise by as much as 5 degrees Celsius - 9 degrees Fahrenheit - things are only expected to get worse.

    The U.N. predicts that about 1.8 billion of the most vulnerable people across the globe will be hit by water shortages, 600 million more will go hungry and 32 million will be displaced by droughts and floods.

    "Poor countries have really urgent priorities - putting food on the table, accessing water, health care," said Antonio Hill, a climate change expert with Oxfam. "On all these issues, climate change is making these things worse."

    From Venice to New Orleans, the West is already taking action to fight climate change within their borders.

    Canada said Monday it would spend $85.4 million on adaptation measures, including tens of millions of dollars to help its Inuit communities adapt to warming Arctic climate.

    The low-lying Netherlands - which for centuries has built a vast network of canal systems, experience it is now passing on - is spending an additional $25 billion to improve its water defenses. Italy is doing the same.

    Singapore, meanwhile, has built a 139 million desalination plant to boost its domestic water supply and teamed up with the Dutch engineering firm Delft Hydraulics as part of a more than $208 million effort to become a hub for climate change research - much as it has for biotech and the medical industry.

    The tiny city-state is itself vulnerable to global warming, but also realizes that "there is great potential to make money," said Peter Ng, who is part of the Dutch partnership called Singapore Delft Water Alliance. "If we play our cards right and do what we do well, other countries will come to us for help."

    Poor nations, in the meantime, are doing what little they can.

    Some are creating early warning systems, building bamboo storm shelters on stilts or making plans to relocate island communities. But the money often does not reach villages hardest hit by worsening floods and the rising seas.

    In Kaoakola located along Bangladesh's Jamuna River, for instance, Mohammad Sheikh complains he has been forced to move his house three times because of increased floods.

    "We're very poor. We can't afford it," the 70-year-old said, adding that he has been forced to become a day laborer after his 300 acres were lost to flooding. "The river, the floods have taken everything from me."

    The Maldives - a popular tourist destination made up of more than 1,000 low-lying islands - also exemplifies the limits of good intentions in developing countries. It has rolled out plans to move communities to a few, well-protected islands, but so far has only been able to come up with the money to build up one such island.

    "Climate change has become a daily reality in the Maldives and other small island states," said the country's president, Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, recalling how his islands were being hit by storm surges and erosion while fish were dying of mysterious diseases.

    Even if the maximum suggested assistance is approved, it won't cover the costs.

    Up to $300 million will be available annually if a U.N. adaptation fund is created in Bali as expected, and up to another $1.5 billion a year if an international climate agreement to succeed the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012, is approved.

    That still falls far short of the nearly $86 billion the UNDP estimates is needed annually by 2015, prompting some to suggest that additional mechanisms, such as a tax on bunker fuels or, as Oxfam demands, funding targets for industrialized countries.

    Impoverished nations are also demanding a post-Kyoto agreement offer increased access to technology for adaptation and assurances the money for climate response won't be taken from already meager development aid.

    "The money they put up for this adaptation fund is peanuts. It's nothing," said Khandaker Rashedul Haque, a Ministry of Environment comparing his problems in Bangladesh to those of New Orleans, which is still recovering from Hurricane Katrina.

    "Why are they putting up a few billion for a city like New Orleans when they are putting up a few million for the entire world?"

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    Associated Press Writer Julhas Alam in Dhaka, Bangladesh contributed to this report.