Baltic and European news
Leaders focus on how to share climate aid burden
Thursday 29 October 2009
European heads of state and government meeting in Brussels on Thursday night will focus on agreeing a formula for dividing up among member states Europe's financial contribution to climate mitigation and adaptation efforts in developing countries.
The agreement is likely to involve a deal on surplus carbon credits, or AAUs, under the Kyoto protocol, ENDS understands. "There should be clarity on internal burden-sharing," the Swedish EU presidency told journalists on Wednesday.
EU leaders are at this stage unlikely to specify a range for the EU's financial contribution, although a deal on an internal burden-sharing formula would give some indication. The European Commission had insisted figures would be forthcoming http://www.endseurope.com/22401?referrer=bulletin&DCMP=EMC-ENDS-EUROPE-DAILY.
Central and eastern European member states led by Poland have insisted on a burden-sharing formula before the EU puts a figure on the table for its financial contribution as part of international negotiations on a post-2012 climate policy framework.
The commission proposed a range of options for the formula in its September policy paper on climate financing http://www.endseurope.com/22119?referrer=bulletin&DCMP=EMC-ENDS-EUROPE-DAILY, each representing a different weighting of GDP and emissions. The EU-12 favours a strongly GDP-weighted formula http://www.endseurope.com/22282?referrer=bulletin&DCMP=EMC-ENDS-EUROPE-DAILY while the EU-15 prefers one based more on emissions.
Internationally, a GDP-weighted formula would result in the EU paying for a larger share of the funds needed to tackle climate change relative to emerging economies such as China, if these agree to contribute. Too great an emphasis on emissions however may prove unacceptable to emerging economies.
Diplomats and other sources close to Thursday's summit said the EU-12 may ease their demands for a GDP-based formula in return for a favourable deal on their abundant AAUs. Environment ministers http://www.endseurope.com/22438?referrer=bulletin&DCMP=EMC-ENDS-EUROPE-DAILY last week failed to agree what Europe could do to prevent these from flooding the market after 2012.
The leaders are expected to endorse the commission's estimates that developing countries will need E100bn annually by 2020, and that E22-50bn of this should come from international climate funds. They may also agree E5-7bn should be made available in up-front financing for 2010-13.
Follow-up: European summit homepage
http://www.consilium.europa.eu/showPage.aspx?id=668&lang=EN plus
press release
http://www.consilium.europa.eu/showFocus.aspx?id=1&focusId=414&lang=EN
and statements from Oxfam
Greenpeace http://www.endseurope.com/docs/91029a.pdf (and letter to EU leaders http://www.endseurope.com/docs/91029b.doc) and WWF
ENDS Europe Daily is Europe's leading environmental news service. A free trial is available by clicking on the following link: http://www.endseuropedaily.com/web/helcom.