Developed Nations Failing to Keep Climate Summit promises

By Lilian Museka

Developed nations are failing to keep the promise they made last year to provide adequate finance to help the world’s poorest countries adapt to the impacts of climate change.

 Research published  by the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED)  shows  in the last December’s climate summit in Copenhagen, the developed countries committed to provide developing nations with US$30 billion between 2010 and 2012, with the money balanced between funding for mitigation and adaptation projects but has not been fulfilled.

“Our research shows   that the developed countries have failed to meet their responsibility to help poorer nations,” Says Achala Chandani of IIED.

The research published includes a five-point plan to enable developed nations to fulfill their pledges and build the trust needed to advance the next session of UN climate-change negotiations, which begin on 29 November in Cancun, Mexico. 

The research shows that funding pledges made since the Copenhagen meeting are far from balanced, with very little earmarked for projects that would enable developing nations to enhance their resilience to climate-change impacts on agriculture, infrastructure, health and livelihoods.

 “Only US$3 billion has been formally allocated for adaptation. There is also a danger that some of this could come in the form of loans which would further indebt already poor nations and force them to pay to fix a problem that the developed nations created.” says Dr Saleemul Huq of IIED

 The researchers warn that it is also unclear how the money will be disbursed, what type of projects it will support, and how the global community will be able to track adherence to pledges and ensure that the funding is truly new and additional to existing aid budgets.

“Currently there is no common framework to oversee, account for and enforce the delivery of the money that rich nations promised to support adaptation to climate change in developing nations,” says Dr.  J. Timmons Roberts, Director of the Center for Environmental Studies at Brown University and co-director of the AidData project.

 “Industrialized nations seem to think they can get away with an “anything goes” approach—where whatever they describe as adaptation funding counts,”  says Dr. Roberts adding that, “the danger is that existing development projects that are not specific responses to the threat of climate change will simply be relabeled as climate adaptation projects.”

 The researchers say that to rebuild trust on both sides of the North-South divide, industrialized countries should support an independent registry under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and then provide it with detailed and timely data and on all their climate-related projects.

Robert  says there is technology now that would allow recipient governments and civil society groups of all types to add their own information about the progress and effectiveness of every adaptation project planned and underway.

He adds that, “By tracking funds all the way from taxpayers in developed nations to each expenditure in the developing countries, this system could create a new era in global cooperation, avoiding many of the pitfalls of past foreign aid."

 Meanwhile a researcher at Brown University Mr. David Ciplet, says the big promises for adaptation funding made at Copenhagen were not being met.  Rather, a fragmented non-system for deciding what counts as adaptation funding is forming, and there was no way to truly measure whether the promises were being met.

 "Adaptation funding is absolutely crucial for the billions of people who face the rising intensity of climate disasters, but making promises is only the first step,” says Ciplet adding that, “What matters now is that developed countries make good on their promises and provide the funding needed to enable vulnerable countries and communities to increase their resilience to climatic threats such as droughts and floods, rising sea levels and new risks from diseases and crop pests."

The research released this month, was titled Fast- start adaptation funding: Keeping promises from Copenhagen. The point plans listed include:

-Developed countries should provide similar amounts for adaptation and mitigation and all adaptation finances should be in the form of public grants,

-The adaptation fund board should be tasked with defining which activities count as adaptation, create manage a global accounting framework with majority representation from developed countries.

-For fast-start finance, pledges can be measured from the baseline of business-as –usual development and climate funding and contributor countries should channel adaptation finance through a United Nations Framework Convention on Climate change (NFCCC) fund with governance structure that gives majority representation to developing countries.