EU nations have agreed to give 7.2 billion euros (US$106.33 billion) to help developing nations tackle climate change, the Swedish EU presidency announced yesterday.
“The EU total is equal to 2.4 billion euros per year,” over the next three years, with voluntary pledges coming in from all 27 EU member states, Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt said after a two-day EU summit in Brussels.
The money will be used to help the developing world adapt to global warming over the next three years and to encourage the ongoing UN climate conference to do more.
“It was also possible through the night to get contributions from all 27 member states,” and the European commission, Reinfeldt said, as the voluntary pledges topped the 6 billion euros target set by the Swedish EU presidency.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and French President Nicolas Sarkozy also demanded that leaders in Copenhagen agree on a treaty that would be “legally binding within six months,” and issued a new target for a global reduction in deforestation, which should reach 25 percent by 2015.
Brown said a final Copenhagen deal must be consistent with a G20 leaders’ commitment to maintain global warming at a maximum of 2°C, compared with pre-industrial times.
Toward that end, the EU should commit to reducing its emissions by 30 percent by 2020, he said, although his peers in Brussels have said that should be conditional upon similar movement from other big polluters like China and the US, which is not yet the case.
Meanwhile in Copenhagen, the first official draft blueprint for a deal at the UN climate talks sees targets of limiting global warming to 1.5°C or 2°C, a document seen by reporters yesterday said.
The lower temperature is embraced by small island states and many African nations badly threatened by climate change, while the higher target has been supported by rich nations and emerging giants such as China, India and Brazil.
The draft is to be submitted to environment ministers from around the world, with the goal of having it endorsed at a summit on Dec. 18.
The proposed draft was put forward by the Ad-hoc Working Group on Long-Term Cooperative Action (AWG-LCA), one of the two negotiating tracks in the talks in Copenhagen. However, the text carries many brackets, which denote disagreement.
In related news, Danish authorities are bracing for a massive demonstration in Copenhagen today expected to draw tens of thousands of people. Police have beefed up security at Denmark’s land and sea borders in a bid to prevent troublemakers from entering the country.
Violent far-left groups have already threatened via Internet sites to join the protests.
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