UN claims climate change funding is inadequate

Sept. 3, 2009 - PRLog -- The UN yesterday condemned the failure of rich nation to take the lead in tackling climate change, adding that the current levels of funding climate change mitigation and adaptation are “woefully inadequate”.

The UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, which released yesterday a new climate change report entitled “The World Economic and Social Survey 2009: Promoting Development, Saving the Planet”, argues for an increase in low-carbon funding being offered to developing nations. Increased investment in climate change mitigation and adaptation measures should take place as soon as possible and should exceed one per cent of global GDP, equating to about $500bn.

It argues that the biggest obstacle to tackling climate change remains the single long-standing failure of wealthy countries to follow climate change commitments of international support for poverty reduction and technology transfers.

This report also criticizes some rich nations for not taking on a greater share of the cost of fighting climate change, arguing that poorer countries are facing "vastly more daunting climate change challenges than those confronting developed countries". According to report, it is in rich nations' interest to boost climate change spending, warning that the long-term impact on their economies of unmitigated climate change will be worse.

Russell Lerman from Envido said that "A failure to think in these bolder terms runs the real danger of locking in dirtier investments for several more decades in the fight against climate change. By continuing in the present business-as-usual scenario, or making only marginal changes to fight climate change the permanent loss of projected world gross product could be as high as 20 per cent."

The report also claims that climate change policy measures pioneered in industrialised nations, such as carbon trading and green taxes, are largely unsuitable for use in emerging economies to tackle climate change. Instead, it recommends a number of more direct climate change funding schemes, such as the creation of a global clean energy fund, a global feed-in tariff regime in support of renewable energy sources, a climate change technology programme and an intellectual property regime designed to accelerate the transfer of clean technologies to combat climate change.

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