Bloc calls for US climate aid funding
G77 and China call on IMF and US to provide hundreds of billions in financial climate aid for developing world
By Katie Rice
Fresh from the emission reductions tit-for-tat between the US and China earlier this week, the Group of 77 plus China called on the US Congress to free up $200 billion to help fund mitigation.
Lumumba Stanislaus Di-Aping, the Sudanese ambassador who represents the G77 plus China at the UN climate talks, was elaborating on an idea sparked earlier on Thursday morning that the International Monetary Fund help pay for a sustainable climate fund.
Billionaire financier George Soros had mooted the idea of using IMF Special Drawing Rights funds, of which more than $150 billion are held by the 15 largest developed economies, to pay for a special green fund for developing countries.
Soros’s proposal would see the countries that mainly have the SDRs sitting in reserve band together to lend $100 billion for 25 years to a special fund to jump start carbon-reduction projects in the developing world.
But the outspoken Di-Aping went one step further and urged the US to share the responsibility in financing a climate deal that “is necessary to stop the world from immeasurable suffering”.
“The US Congress has to be asked – you approve of billions of dollars in defence budgets – can’t you approve $200 billion to save the world?”
The question will remain if China, as one of the largest greenhouse gas emitters, would benefit from such funds, as US Special Envoy Todd Stern has already ruled out the possibility of US public funds being provided to China.
The ambassador reiterated the position of the G77 and China that the US needs to join the Kyoto Protocol, and was quite strong in his rhetoric.
“The world cannot achieve an equitable and just deal that would save the planet without the US. Global peace and security would be threatened without American participation.”
He also urged US President Obama to remember his Kenyan roots when agreeing to the joint G8 position of capping global temperatures increases at 2C and said that under current IPCC scientific predictions, the African continent faces temperatures increase of 3.5C if efforts are not more stringent.
‘We should not waste time trying to reinvent what we’ve already achieved, it simply undermines the fight against emissions and that’s the challenge Obama needs to rise to. It’s what we expect of him as a Nobel Prize winner, its what we expect of him as one of the advocates of multilateralism and as a member of the developing world – his family are still in that continent of which he is proud to be a member of.”
The G77 plus China represents the largest developing nation bloc in the United Nations and has stuck rigidly to its policy of maintaining and enforcing the Kyoto Protocol, rather than the creation of a new ‘Copenhagen Protocol’.
