Joint development NGOs response to EU Finance Ministers meeting today: OXFAM, ACTIONAID, CIDSE, CAFOD, APRODEV, TEARFUND, CONCORD
Europe will offer no new money to help poor countries tackle climate change under proposals put forward by Finance Ministers today.
Europe’s leading aid agencies warn the proposals could scupper a deal on climate change and set back the fight against poverty unless European Heads of State and Government step up with new money when they meet at the end of the month.
The proposals, which will be discussed at the Heads of State Summit on 29 and 30 October, failed to make a clear commitment that money put forward to help poor countries adapt to a changing climate and reduce emissions would be additional to existing aid commitments. Instead they provided rhetorical assurances that climate finance should not undermine action to combat poverty or attain the millennium development goals.
Elise Ford, Head of Oxfam in the EU office said: “Europe should not cannibalise aid budgets to meet its responsibilities on climate change. The world’s poorest communities should not be forced to choose between building flood defences and building schools. European leaders must put new money on the table now.”
The UK government has pushed for climate financing to be delivered on top of aid commitments. However, its proposal to limit the amount of aid money to be used for climate financing to ten per cent has not yet received sufficient support at Brussels. The UK is also pushing for Heads of State to agree how much the EU should contribute in new and additional public funding in time for the climate talks in Copenhagen.
Oxfam estimates that at least 75 million fewer children are likely to attend school and 8.6 million fewer people could have access to HIV/AIDS treatment if aid that would otherwise have been spent on health and education is diverted to tackle climate change.
Climate finance is a make or break issue in international climate talks. However, with just days to go until a climate deal is due to be agreed in Copenhagen, the worlds wealthiest and most polluting nations have yet to make a serious offer.
The Finance Ministers’ proposal refers only to the European Commission’s low estimate that poor countries should receive between Euro 22 billion and 50 billion in public climate finance - however it leaves Heads of State and Government to decide how much of this money the European Union should be responsible for. The Commission has previously said Europe should be responsible for providing between just Euros 2 billion and 15 billion of the global figure. Development groups are calling for Europe to provide at least Euro 35 billion in public finance towards a global climate fund of at least Euro 110bn per year.
The EU’s climate finance commitments could be met without costing the European taxpayer another Euro. The European Commission estimates that €50bn per year will be raised from polluting industries by the auctioning of emission allowances under the EU Emissions Trading Scheme. This money can be used in an international system to be agreed in Copenhagen that will give real assurances that promises on climate financing will not be broken.
Laura Sullivan, European Policy and Campaigns Manager at ActionAid said: “The EU must act now. Without new and additional money for adaptation, people being hit hardest by climate change - like the poorest farmers in the south - will be left on their own to face a crisis that they did not cause.”
Rob van Drimmelen, Secretary General of Aprodev, said: “Failing to stump up new money essentially passes the climate bill onto the world’s poorest countries. The risk is that EU is abdicating its leadership role and failing to assume its historical responsibility for climate change. It is absurd to ask the world’s poor to pay the bill for decades of unlimited emissions in our part of the world.”
Tags: adaptation, climatechange, Copenhagen, EU
