Rich nations fail to honor climate pledge

A group of rich countries has broken a promise to pay more than a billion dollars to help the developing world cope with the effects of climate change. The group agreed in 2001 to pay $1.2 billion to help poor and vulnerable countries predict and plan for the effects of global warming, as well as fund flood defenses, conservation and thousands of other projects. But new figures show little over $186 million of the promised money has been delivered. The disclosure comes after British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said this week that industrialized countries must do more to help the developing world adapt to a changed climate, and two weeks before countries meet in Bali to begin negotiations on a new global deal to regulate emissions which is expected to stress the need for all countries to adapt. Andrew Pendleton, climate change policy analyst at Christian Aid, said: "This represents a broken promise on a massive scale and on quite a cynical scale as well. Promising funds for adaptation is exactly the kind of incentive the rich countries will offer at Bali to bring the developing world on board a new climate deal. This is the signal we are seeing on all fronts, that the developed countries are unwilling to fulfill their moral and legal commitments." Under the terms of the climate adaptation agreement, made at a UN meeting in Bonn in 2001, the EU, Canada, Norway, Switzerland, Iceland and New Zealand said they would jointly pay developing countries $410 million each year from 2005 to 2008. They called on other countries to donate as well. The money was supposed to compensate developing countries for the severe effects over the coming decades of global warming, which is largely caused by carbon emissions from the developed world. The vast majority of the promised money was expected to be channeled through funds run by an organization called the Global Environment Facility (GEF) in Washington DC, which was to distribute it through programs run by the World Bank and United Nations. But accounts presented to a GEF council meeting last week show that only $177 million had been paid into the funds by Sept. 30 this year, much less than the $1.2 billion due by the end of 2007 under the Bonn agreement. Another $106 million has been pledged to the GEF by specific countries, but not yet paid. Saleem Huq, head of the climate change group at the International Institute for Environment and Development, said: "Most people in the climate change debate focus on how to cut emissions and how to bring the US, China and India into an agreement. The impact of climate change on poor countries, and the responsibilities of rich countries to help them, gets much less attention." "The Bonn agreement is clear that the money paid to help developing countries cope with climate change must be additional. Just counting overseas development aid as money for climate change adaptation cuts no ice and is double counting," said Huq. Christian Aid said climate change was already having a devastating impact on poor communities around the world. A new report from the charity says people from Bolivia and Bangladesh to Mali and Tajikistan are being affected. It says: "It is the rural poor who are the most exposed. In many countries, they were struggling with droughts, floods and hurricanes even before climate change started to bite. Now their problems are intensifying."