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Progress Made In Talks On Climate Change Funding

Posted on: Wednesday, 27 May 2009, 05:50 CDT

The world’s largest carbon polluters made progress in talks on Tuesday on how to help poor nations that may be dramatically affected by climate change.

The Major Economies Forum (MEF) made headway on a new global treaty that should be crafted in Copenhagen in December, senior officials said.

"We made progress on a major subject, which is finance and financial architecture. It's not final, but one feels that there is a real consensus," said French Ecology Minister Jean-Louis Borloo.

Todd Stern, the US special envoy for climate change, said discussions had been “constructive, candid, and frank."

"We made particularly good progress on the area of financing, which I would say is one of the two biggest issues in the Copenhagen negotiations," Stern told a press conference.

The Copenhagen accord is expected to take effect in 2012, when the UN’s Kyoto Protocol ends.

Talks will soon continue with the aim of hammering out a negotiation blueprint for the meetings in Copenhagen.

Developing and industrialized nations are still far apart on how much money should be given to help vulnerable economies affected by climate change.

Cuts on carbon emissions have also become a stumbling block for some nations.

Researchers believe severe reductions are needed to prevent major damage to the world’s climate system.

Stern and Borloo both said the MEF nations showed interest in the “Green Fund” plan proposed by Mexico last year.

Nations would be required to give to the fund based on their gross domestic product (GDP) and their share of the earth’s carbon pollution.

"I think there were many delegates in the room who had a very positive general impression of the Mexican plan," said Stern.

"I don't have any objections to it. We have to go through the details of it and look at it carefully so I am not signing on to every jot and title, but (we thought it was) a general good idea and a highly constructive contribution to the discussion on financing," he told the AFP.

Last month, US President Barack Obama launched the MEF to speed up the search for common ground among nations that account for the majority of greenhouse-gas emissions.

The group plans to deliver the consensus at the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

Australia, Brazil, Britain, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Mexico, Russia, South Africa, the United States, and the European Union (EU) are all participating in the MEF.

Source: redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports

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