The Guardian has it that the EU is once again stalling on adaptation finance being additional to aid (see previous Climatico posts on this issue here and here). Someone has forwarded them “confidential papers” where key lines of negotiating text have been removed. Apparently it says, “Cannot accept reference to ‘additional to’, and ‘separate from’ [...]

There was a meeting on climate technology transfer in Delhi a few weeks ago, and the G77+China made their feelings known that an agreement on technology transfer is crucial to a fair global deal. At issue is the fact that rich countries are demanding that poorer countries like India and China reduce their emissions, even [...]

“Unless we see an advance on ambitious industrialised country targets and significant finance on the table, it is very difficult for negotiators in this process to continue their work in good faith” – that’s how Yvo de Boer summarised the current situation today. But what’s frustrating de Boer (and I’m inclined to agree) is that [...]

Rich countries, led by the US, have opposed discussing proposals from various poor countries around the reform of intellectual property rights (IPR). These discussions are crucial to technology transfer efforts. This document is quite useful as a primer on IPR and climate change.Technology transfer (as I’ve written before) will be crucial for helping poor countries [...]

Manmohan Singh recently argued that annex 1 countries should provide 0.5% of GDP to help developing countries reduce emissions, and that India would not collaborate with inspection of their emissions unless this rose to 0.8%. It seems that conditional bargaining chips are all the rage these days in climate negotiations, after the EU’s offer of [...]

Last year the UK pledged £75 million to Bangladesh, often cited as one of the countries that will be hit very hard by climate change. Even modest sea level rises could flood 20% of land. The cash will be used for things like raising homes in high-risk flood areas, provide flood-resilient crops, and a national [...]

The leading think-tank Chatham House held a conference on Monday and Tuesday this week, entitled “The Politics of Climate Change Agreement”.  There were some high-level speakers, including Joan Ruddock (DECC minister), the head of UNEP, and the chief negotiator of Papua New Guinea (he who told the USA to “show some leadership or get out [...]

Like most EU talks seem to be nowadays, those today on climate change were rather fractious, specifically the debates around adaptation financing.The current EU position for Copenhagen estimates that “net global incremental investment” for tackling climate change needs to be 175 billion euros by 2020, with 100 billion euros of that spent in developing countries. [...]

Low-lying Bangladesh is often cited as one of the countries likely to be worst hit by climate change, particularly due to sea-level rise. Urgent measures in Bangladesh’s 10-year action plan are predicted to cost $5 billion in the first five years.They’ve already raised $45 million from donors, but now there are fears that support will [...]

A few weeks ago, a new website monitoring climate funds was launched. Called www.climatefundsupdate.org it is funded by the Overseas Development Institute (ODI), amongst others. However, it is an independent website, and aims to provides information on the growing number of climate change funding initiatives, and will track their progress up to Copenhagen. In particular, [...]