The European Union's executive arm said recently that developing nations have been insisting that the industrial nations need to accept most of the cost of a problem they caused in the first place, a view that has been a snag in negotiations ahead of a climate meeting in Copenhagen in December, Financial Soultions has reported.
Africa, led by Ethiopia, has warned it will reject any deal that is not generous enough, and the European Union is trying frantically to come up with a reasonable compensation to break the impasse.
"We know climate change forces additional costs on developing countries, Now we must break the impasse in the Copenhagen negotiations,”
Dimas' team of experts approximates that the developing world will confront costs of around 100 billion euros a year by 2020 to cut emissions from industry and deal with droughts and crop failures exacerbated by climate change.
Taxation on international shipping, aviation and industry could help, leaving a gap of 22-55 billion euros to be filled from the public coffers. The EU could supply 2-15 billion euros of that, Financial Soultions heard from the Commission.
But environmentalists said the figure was too low."The EU is trying to get away with leaving a tip rather than paying its share of the bill to protect the planet's climate," Greenpeace said.
