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Climate talks yield little funding for impact on poor

November 17, 2016 at 9:40 pm

Activists hold banners at a demonstration for climate change and calling for environmental action in Marrakesh on the sidelines of the COP22 climate conference on November 13, 2016 [Jalal Morchidi/Anadolu Agency]

The Marrakesh climate talks may not deliver a substantial boost for international funding to help poorer countries cope with the worsening floods, droughts, storms and rising seas brought by climate change, negotiators and development charities fear.

A ministerial dialogue at the talks yesterday yielded little concrete beyond a few pledges from European countries to adaptation funds set up under the UN negotiations, they said.

Developing countries have made consistent and impassioned pleas in Marrakesh for more financing to help them adjust to intensifying climate shifts – but so far those pleas have largely fallen on deaf ears, their representatives said.

Frank Bainimarama, prime minister of the Pacific island nation of Fiji, spoke of the “terrifying new era we face because of climate change”, after a powerful cyclone this year wiped out one fifth of his country’s GDP.

Fiji needs access to finance so it can adapt to climate change effects, through measures such as strengthening homes and infrastructure, burying power lines and relocating people, he said.

He criticised the current level of international government finance for poorer nations to adapt to climate pressures as “woefully inadequate”.

According to a recent “roadmap” from wealthy nations outlining how they will mobilise the annual $100 billion in overall climate funding they have promised by 2020, the amount allocated specifically for adaptation in 2013 and 2014 was almost $10 billion per year, or around 16 per cent of the total.

The latest UN estimate puts the share of climate finance going to adaptation somewhat higher, at around 25 per cent.

The donors’ roadmap projects the amount of international funding for adaptation will at least double in volume by 2020.

But that would still fall well short of the “balance” in funding between adaptation measures and emissions-cutting steps recommended in the new climate accord crafted in Paris last year.

“Doubling is not enough,” said Lutz Weischer of the thinktank Germanwatch. “We need to scale it up much more aggressively.”

Developing countries want a quadrupling of adaptation funding from current levels, and had hoped rich states would respond to that call at the Marrakesh talks, which end on Friday. But climate finance experts say that seems unlikely.

The negotiations on the issue continued on Thursday, amid disagreement over the strength of the commitment developed countries are prepared to make on adaptation finance.

Zambian president Edgar Lungu said on Wednesday the least developed countries were being left “with far too little support, and adaptation needs continue to be neglected rather than prioritised”. The difficulty such countries have in attracting private-sector investment for adaptation makes matter worse, he added.

Fiji is doing what it can to tackle climate change with its own resources, its prime minister said, improving building codes and better equipping communities to withstand shocks. But it needs more money in the form of grants, he added.

“It is high time to rearrange global spending priorities in the direction of those nations that are most at risk,” he said.