EU offers poor nations billions in climate aid

Danish foreign minister Per Stig Moller, left, seen with his counterparts, Britain's David Miliband, Sweden's Carl Bildt, France's Bernard Kouchner, and Finland's Alexander Stubb, Thursday Sept. 10 2009, in Copenhagen, Denmark, at meeting leading up to the UN climate summit in Copenhagen in December. European foreign ministers say they are intensifying their diplomatic contacts to try to reach a new global pact on climate change. (AP Photo/Carsten Snejbjerg, Polfoto) (Snejbjerg Carsten - AP)

By AOIFE WHITE

The Associated Press
Thursday, September 10, 2009; 10:19 AM

BRUSSELS -- The European Union proposed Thursday to offer up to euro15 billion ($21.8 billion) a year in aid to poor developing countries to persuade them to sign a new global climate change agreement.

However, development and environmental campaigners blasted the offer as insufficient because it assumes that poorer nations will bear most of the costs of reducing their greenhouse gas emissions.

EU Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas said the promised funding was Europe's "first meaningful proposal" to urge faster progress toward a new United Nations global climate pact at Copenhagen in December.

Europe now wants to put the pressure on other major polluters such as the United States and China to get them to either promise emission cuts or pledge funding toward poorer nations.

The EU "will not and cannot bankroll the negotiations alone," Dimas said.

Five EU foreign ministers from Britain, France, Denmark, Sweden and Finland said Thursday that they would press the U.S., China, Brazil, India and Russia to do more to tackle climate change in a series of EU meetings in coming weeks.

"Time is now short and the need is urgent," British Foreign Minister David Miliband said at Copenhagen University. His Danish counterpart, Per Stig Moeller, said the EU "must also do all it can to engage key players."

The prime ministers of Sweden and Denmark, meanwhile, were traveling to South Africa and India to discuss a new climate change treaty.

The EU funding was expected by poor countries and by aid and environment groups which argue that centuries of economic growth in Europe and North America are largely to blame for the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, and that those countries should provide billions in compensation and aid to developing nations that will suffer from a warming climate.

But environmental campaigners criticized that as too little.

The environmental group WWF said the EU was assuming that developing countries would pay out of their own pockets for the kind of energy efficiency reductions that richer nations haven't managed.

Greenpeace said EU governments had watered down earlier plans to give up to euro24 billion ($35 billion) a year by 2020 and that the EU was now "trying to get away with leaving a tip rather than paying its share of the bill to protect the planet's climate."

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