As United Nations negotiators this week wrangle over the best way to deliver $100bn of climate finance by 2020, the UK has announced how it will spend £150m of funding to help developing countries tackle climate change and reduce poverty.
UK Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change Ed Davey annouced a series of new projects today at the Doha Summit and confirmed the UK would deliver the £1.5bn Fast Start finance it has previously pledged to deliver by the end of this year.
A series of new climate programmes will benefit from UK funding over the coming years, including a range of projects in Africa and Suoth America.
The bulk of the funding, £98m, will go towards the Green Africa Power initiative to help finance 270MW of new renewable energy capacity.
A further £21m will fund the UK’s Water Security Programme, which together with the World Bank aims to improve water resource management for 18 million people in poverty.
In addition, the UK will provide a £15m grant over four years to the Colombian government designed to help reduce emissions from agriculture and replant 28,000 hectares of grazing land.
Together with Germany and Norway, the UK is also funding the Get Fit project to develop small renewable energy projects in Uganda. The UK’s contribution will amount to £14m.
Finally, Davey said the UK is providing £1.5m to help roll out its “2050 calculator” tool to 10 developing countries, so they can map potential emissions and energy scenarios over the coming decades.
“Climate change is a global threat and with every passing year, the nature and the extent of that threat grows clearer,” said Davey. “We also recognise that the world’s poorest will be hit the hardest by the impacts of climate change and we need to help communities adapt to these challenges.”
He also reiterated the UK was committed to delivering its “fair share” of $100bn per year of public and private finance in developing countries by 2020.
“Our focus will be on results that make a difference on the ground and we are working with a variety of partners, including developing countries, other donors organisations and the private sector to deliver this,” he added.
The news was welcomed by EU climate commisioner Connie Hedegard who wrote on Twitter that the UK was the first EU member state to pledge post-2012 climate finance.
She also hinted that there would be “more to come” from other EU member states in the coming days.
The issue of climate finance has plagued the latest round of UN talks, after a new briefing from the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) claimed that only $23.6bn of the $30bn “fast-start finance” committed by developed countries in Copenhagen has been delivered.
Industrial nations three years ago pledged to provide three years of “fast-start” finance and commited to boost climate funding to $100bn a year by 2020. But talks are still on-going to agree how to raise the promised $100bn and developing countries have consistently argued that not all of the promised “fast-start” funding has been delivered. Moreover, there are grave fears that cash-strapped western economies will reduced climate funding for the period between 2013 and 2020, even as talks continue to increase funding.
The UK’s announcement came as climate economist Nicholas Stern warned the world is making “recklessly slow” progress on cutting emissions, and urged rich countries to play a key role in helping developing countries deliver low-carbon growth.
He also issued a stark warning that the “most inequitable of all outcomes” for the Doha talks would be if the stand-off over how to share responsibility for tackling climate change was allowed to block progress.
The US is adamant no new treaty can work without ambitious binding commitments from emerging economies. However, many of the leading emerging economies have refused to agree a deal unless it imposes a greater responsibility for emissions reductions on industrialised nations.
The US envoy Todd Stern yesterday said the country had two key conditions for the legally binding deal that countries are hoping to sign in 2015, arguing any deal must include every UN member and must improve on the Kyoto Protocol in terms of reflecting “the real world spread of responsibilities” between rich and poor nations.
“While there certainly needs to be differentiation, we would argue that differentiation needs to be made on the basis of practical, pragmatic, real world material considerations,” he said, in a thinly veiled call for large emerging economy emitters to commit to more ambitious emissions targets.
Stern also defended the US environmental record, insisting it was on track to meet a target to cut emissions by 17 per cent from 2005 to 2020, despite opposition from Republicans.
Emissions have fallen in the US partly because of an increase in renewable energy and new rules for vehicle and power plant emissions, but also because of an economic slowdown and a switch from coal to gas power that have combined helped to cut emissions 8.6 per cent against 2005 levels by 2011.
The US never ratified the Kyoto Protocol in 2009, and will not be joining the EU and Australia in the proposed second phase of Kyoto, which is due to replace the first treaty next year.
However, all parties, including the US have agreed to work towards a new treaty in 2015 that would commit countries to making legally binding emissions cuts from 2020.
In related news, Monaco reportedly yesterday made an unconditional pledge to cut its emissions 30 per cent by 2020 under the second phase of the Kyoto Protocol.
It is also on track to complete its commitments from the first Kyoto commitment period, and is urging others to similarly make more ambitious pledges.
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