In the first significant announcement at the climate change conference here, the European Union put forward about $2.9 billion as its contribution to the fast-start fund that is supposed to help the most vulnerable countries in dealing with the adverse impacts of climate change.
The money is part of the nearly $10 billion that the European Union has pledged to the fast-start fund over the next three years. The fund was one of the very few real outcomes of the Copenhagen climate change conference last year, where the developed world promised to come up with $30 billion of ?new and additional? money to help the poorer countries adapt to climate change in the period between 2010 and 2012.
The promises notwithstanding, the actual contributions from the countries have not been readily forthcoming. Japan alone, for example, has pledged $15 billion, half of the entire sum, but is yet to deliver any part of it.
The operationalisation of the fast-start fund is seen as one of the definite achievables at the two-week Cancun meeting and is seen as a central issue to push forward the pace of negotiations.
However, the reluctance of the rich countries ? most of them still to recover from the economic crisis ?in putting direct cash in this fund became evident again when the European Union said that half of the money it was contributing would be in the form of loans or equities in local companies. The loans would have to be returned while investment in the local companies would mean that these countries would also gain from the profits, if any.
The European Union also did not clarify how much of the money it was providing was ?new and additional? and not just a redirection of aid that was already being given.
With Tuesday?s announcement the rich countries claim to have organised most of the promised $30 billion for the next three years. But as an Indian negotiator put it, not more than $5-6 billion would be ?new and additional? as it was meant to be.
India has already made it clear that it would not compete for any of these funds and that these should be directed at the most vulnerable regions like small island nations which are in danger of being submerged.
Apart from this fast-start fund, the rich countries had also agreed in Copenhagen to set up a funding mechanism by 2020 that would be able to raise $100 billion every year to finance mitigation and adaptation all over the world. Not much progress has been made on that so far.
