Barack Obama will not be pledging any cash to a near-empty fund for poor countries at a United Nations summit on climate change next week, the UN special climate change envoy said on Friday.
The UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, has challenged the 125 world leaders attending the 23 September summit to make “bold pledges” to the fund, intended to help poor countries cope with climate change.
The UN has been pressing rich countries to come up with pledges of between $10bn and $15bn.
“We are putting a lot of pressure for them to do it at the summit on the 23rd,” the UN envoy and former Irish president, Mary Robinson, told the Guardian on the sidelines of a US Agency for International Development meeting. But she added: “I know the United States is not going to commit because I’ve asked.”
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China Says Climate Deal Hinges On Aid To Emerging Economies
Reuters, 6 June: China led calls by emerging economies on Friday for the rich to raise financial aid to the poor as a precondition for a United Nations deal to combat global warming. Developed nations should have legally binding obligations to provide $100 billion a year by 2020 to poor nations, along with legally binding cuts in emissions.
Many countries at U.N. climate negotiations from June 4-15 have welcomed news this week that the United States plans to slash emissions from power plants, but emerging nations said cash was just as important to unlock progress.
“When the financing is resolved, this will set a very good foundation to negotiate a good agreement,” China’s chief negotiator Xie Zhenhua told delegates from about 170 nations.
A global U.N. deal to curb rising greenhouse gas emissions is meant to be decided in Paris in late 2015 to slow global warming that a U.N. panel of experts says will cause more heatwaves, floods and rising sea levels.
Xie said developed nations, which have promised to raise aid to $100 billion a year by 2020, should have legally binding obligations to provide finance and technology to emerging economies, along with legally binding cuts in emissions.
But European Climate Commissioner Connie Hedegaard said it would be hard to treat promises for cash in the same legal way as cuts in emissions of greenhouse gases.