Poor countries at climate change talks demanded yesterday that wealthy nations provide them with billions of dollars a year to cope with global warming and shift away from polluting, carbon-intensive industries.
Without such a deal, delegates from the poorest countries said they would not sign a global warming pact next year to stabilize emissions over the next decade and cut them in half by 2050.
They said that their countries cannot afford on their own the heavy costs of adapting to global warming through means such as building seawalls, relocating villages in threatened areas or helping drought-stricken farmers irrigate their fields.
"Adaptation is critical to our very survival," said Selwin Hart, a delegate from Barbados speaking for the Alliance of Small Island States. "If a deal on adaptation is not part of this agreement, we have no incentive to be part of it."
John Ashe, chairman of the Group of 77 and China, a coalition of developing countries, said members complained they cannot use their scarce resources for mitigation -- the reduction of gases such as carbon dioxide blamed for the rise in world temperatures -- if their most urgent adaptation needs aren't met.
"The magnitude is great and there is a sense of urgency," Ashe said. "It is not possible to carry out mitigation without doing adaptation as well."
The weeklong conference of representatives from 163 countries launched a 21-month process on Monday aimed at concluding a new climate change agreement to replace the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.
The issue of assistance to poor countries almost derailed December talks in Bali at which world governments agreed to launch the current negotiations. Many poor countries argued that industrialized countries should take the first step in both reducing emissions and helping developing countries cope with rising temperatures.
Only up to US$300 million annually will be available through a UN adaptation fund created in Bali, with a maximum of US$1.5 billion a year projected if a climate agreement to succeed the Kyoto Protocol is approved.
That is much less than the nearly US$86 billion the UN Development Program estimates is needed annually by 2015.
Meanwhile, a decision on how much rich nations should slash their greenhouse gas emissions in the next decade should be made after the US has a new president, Yvo de Boer, head of the UN Convention on Climate Change, said yesterday.
"There are some topics which it makes sense to leave for later in the process, for example what sort of targets or commitments are industrialized countries going to agree to," he told reporters.
"That is something which is perhaps more sensibly discussed with a new administration," he said.
The US wants fast-developing nations like India, China and Brazil to sign up to binding carbon emissions cuts, while the EU is pushing for industrialized countries to take the lead.
De Boer said US participation had so far been positive at the Bangkok talks, which aim to lay out an action plan for negotiations toward next year's pact on halting the ravages of climate change.
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