At a United Nations summit in 2009, rich nations including the United States promised 100 million dollars in new aid money, specifically for climate change and weather protection. A few years later, most of the nations have yet to spell out how they will give this much. Many fear that donations will remain the same or even drop. Some critics warn that the money might be taken from other development aid projects.
From Reuters Alert Net, writer Alister Doyle and Nina Chestney preview U.N. meetings in Doha, Qatar that will discuss this issue.
"Finance is key to agreeing on a package at Doha," said Pa Ousman Jarju of Gambia, chair of the 48-nation group of least developed countries. He expressed hopes for "renewed U.S. action on climate change" after Obama's re-election.
Small island states want "scaled-up, new and additional, predictable and adequate climate finance" from 2013, said Samoa's ambassador to the U.N., Aliioaiga Feturi Elisaia.
Developing countries want at least new cash for a fledgling, still-empty U.N. Green Climate Fund that is meant to channel aid towards developing nations
Christiana Figueres, the head of the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat, said that aid would not fall.
"Governments ... will at least maintain the current funding and they will in Doha look at the path along which they will ramp up to reach the $100 billion of mixed-sources of funding," she told Reuters in Singapore.
Some analysts are not so sure.
"At the very best we are looking at a flat-lining but we fear we will see a fall compared to the fast start finance," said Tim Gore of development group Oxfam. He said Spain, Italy, Greece and eastern Europe would all cut.
Under the U.N. plan, all nations will agree by 2015 a deal to slow climate change that will enter into force by 2020. China, the United States, the EU, India and Russia are the top emitters of greenhouse gases.
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