WWF SCOTLAND
The lack of progress made by the G20 in St. Andrews, follows a week of difficult negotiations in UN climate talks in Barcelona as the world heads towards the crucial UN climate conference in Copenhagen in a month’s time.
The G20 Finance Ministers were asked to look at the financing required to make a new global deal at Copenhagen work. WWF’s summary of progress:
• the G20 acknowledged the need to increase significantly and urgently the scale of funding but failed to make any reference to the sums required, estimated to be around $160bn a year of public financing
• the G20 failed to agree on new sources of funding for a climate deal, such as auctioning emissions credits and levies on aviation and shipping
• the G20 agreed some principals on a mechanism to administer and distribute these funds but failed to turn these into concrete proposals
• despite last weeks pledge from Europe there is no new money on the table to help the most vulnerable countries adapt to a changing climate, around $10bn a year is needed.
Dr Richard Dixon, Director of WWF Scotland said:
“The G20 Finance Ministers meeting turned out to be a mostly irrelevant sideshow on the way to the talks in Copenhagen in a months’ time. Failure to come to agreement here is a major disappointment. Given that these are the people who run the biggest economies in the world it seems unlikely that they will manage to devote any serious time to the issue of climate finance before the start of the Copenhagen meeting.
“This is a group that can throw money at collapsing banks but cannot find adequate figures for the far worse challenge to the global economy of a collapsing climate system. Talk of a financial transaction tax has the potential to raise hundreds of billions in new funding every year, but turned out to be a red herring without solid political support.
“If we are to keep the planet below the danger threshold of a 2ºC temperature rise, the rich nations of the world are going to have to help developing countries follow a low-carbon development path and help them cope with the impacts of current and future climate change. We wanted to see solid proposals on how the money would be raised, managed and distributed and an indication of how soon the countries most vulnerable to climate change will receive assistance. The G20 has failed to deliver and the real work will now have to be done at Copenhagen.”
WWF endorsed the G20s continuing interest in winding back fossil fuel use subsidies, but said the group needed to focus its main attention on getting an effective global deal on climate.
Notes to Editors
[1] For more on the G20 meeting, including a 3-page briefing, see http://scotland.wwf.org.uk/g20
[2] The G20 currently consists of 19 major countries plus the European Union: Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey, the UK and the US. The UK is the current chair of the G20 and the grouping also includes the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Collectively, the G20 economies comprise 85% of global gross national product, 80% of world trade and two-thirds of the world population.
[3] G20 Finance Ministers Communique
http://www.g20.org/pub_communiques.aspx
[4] Lord Stern’s review in 2006 showed that spending money now was much cheaper than waiting until climate change has got worse. He described climate change as the greatest market failure ever and estimated that tackling climate change would absorb 1% of global GDP every year if we start now.
For further information, please contact:
WWF Press officer Mandy Carter +(44)7771 818677 mcarter@wwfscotland.org.uk
WWF Scotland Director Dr Richard Dixon +(44)7887 821710 rdixon@wwfscotland.org.uk
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