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	Rich countries must live up to pledge to help developing world on climate change by Reuters / UN News & agencies   Oct. 2010   United Nations officials have called on industrialized countries to live up to their multi-billion dollar pledges to help the developing world adapt to climate change at a week-long meeting of several hundred African experts, including Government ministers, in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.   “At Copenhagen, the centrality of financing to underpin effective adaptation and mitigation action was recognized,” Executive Secretary of the UN Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) Abdoulie Janneh told the Seventh African Development Forum today, referring to last December’s conference on climate change.   “Industrialized countries then pledged fast track funding of up to $30 billion between 2010 and 2012 and agreed to reach the goal of mobilizing $100 billion a year by 2020 for developing countries to implement balanced climate change adaptation and mitigation actions. It is therefore imperative that decisive actions are made to deliver commitments promised at Copenhagen.”   Such actions will send a strong signal that the industrialized countries are committed implementing balanced adaptation and mitigation programmes by Africa and other developing countries and to cultivating a strong spirit of trust, compromise and enhanced collective action, he added, calling for broad-ranging discussions on all dimensions of climate change including the required leadership response.   Speaking on behalf of the youth, African Regional Coordinator Esther Agbarakwe of the UN Commission on Sustainable Development (UNCSD) yesterday emphasized the need for advocacy, behaviour change and cultural transformation to enable a shift towards a more sustainable world.   “Climate change is not a localized problem; it transcends national borders, hence the need for co-operation of intergovernmental agencies but also to include those young and vulnerable people,” she said.   Oct 2010   Current climate funds bypassing poorest nations, reveals new Oxfam report.   The poorest people who need the most help to adapt to a changing climate are largely being bypassed by the small amount of climate funds currently being disbursed, according to a new Oxfam report published at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) conference in Tianjin, China.   Oxfam’s report, Righting Two Wrongs: Making a New Global Climate Fund Work for Poor People, brings together evidence which shows that less than a tenth of major public funds dedicated to climate change have been used to help developing countries adapt to the impacts of climate change.   The majority of climate funding has been used for climate mitigation work that aims to lower greenhouse gas emissions, rather than addressing the various impacts of increased carbon in the atmosphere.   One third of all climate funding has been directed to three countries while the 49 poorest countries have together received only about one eighth of total funding.   Only one tenth of the total amount needed for adaptation programs in least developed countries, as outlined in national adaptation plans, has actually been pledged.   Oxfam Climate Change Advisor Kelly Dent said that the findings reinforce the need for governments to agree on the details of the $100billion in climate finance pledged at last year’s Copenhagen summit.   “Poor countries are feeling the worst impacts of climate change but are not getting their fair share of current climate finance,” Ms Dent said.   “People in developing countries are also best placed to know how to address the impacts of climate change in their local environments, but are not getting enough say in decisions about what projects receive funding.”   The report also finds that climate funding is being dispersed from over 20 different funds and that there are currently no agreed standards as to what constitutes ’climate finance’. “We need governments to establish a ‘one-stop shop’ fund that will see climate finance distributed efficiently, transparently and based on the needs of the poor people receiving it,” Ms Dent said.   “If negotiators don’t propose details for the promised $100 billion fund, the chances of getting a legally binding agreement in the near future will become less and less likely,”   “This is a race against time but we are running on a treadmill because poor people bearing the brunt of climate change simply cannot afford to wait any longer to receive the assistance they so desperately need.”   Oct 2010   UN panel says $100 bln climate aid goal is feasible.(Reuters)   A U.N. advisory group says it would be tough but feasible for rich nations to raise a planned $100 billion a year from 2020 to help poor countries combat climate change, Norway''s Prime Minister told Reuters.   Jens Stoltenberg, who co-chaired a final meeting of top experts in Addis Ababa with Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, said higher penalties on carbon emissions had to be a main source to raise the cash.   "We have concluded that it is challenging but feasible, achievable to raise the $100 billion," Stoltenberg said.   Rich nations agreed at the Copenhagen summit in December 2009 to raise $100 billion a year from 2020 to help poor nations curb their greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to likely impacts such as floods, droughts, mudslides or rising seas.   But they did not agree how and no nations have made firm long-term offers of cash.   The U.N. advisory group, appointed by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in March, will publish a final report in early November.   Stoltenberg said the group would make recommendations but this would not be a full-blown plan. "This will not be a blueprint with an exact formula of how exactly to raise $100 billion," Stoltenberg said.   "We will provide some analytical work, some guidelines and narrow down the different options which we believe are the most realistic and most viable," he said.   "Carbon pricing has to be one of the major sources of finance," he said, adding there were many different options, such as taxes on emissions or via carbon markets.   * Visit the link below to access the Reuters environment blog. Visit the related web page
	Planet''s resources being used at 1.5 times rate nature can replace them by WWF   Oct 2010   Living Planet report shows planet''s resources are being used at 1.5 times the rate nature can replace them.   The latest Living Planet report, published by the conservation group, also reveals the extent to which modern Western lifestyles are plundering natural resources from the tropics at record levels.   The report shows shows the impact of living off the planet''s "savings": in the last 40 years human consumption has doubled, while the Living Planet index - measuring the decline and increase of thousands of species on land, in rivers and at sea - has declined by 30% overall, and by a massive 60% in the tropics.   However the index -compiled by the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) and likened to a stockmarket charting the progress of the natural world - shows that animal populations have risen significantly in the richer nations in the temperate zones north and south of the tropics, and globally appear to have stabilised in the last few years.   Despite the suggestion of good news, WWF and supporters at the launch warned that there were still severe threats, especially from climate change and water shortages.   "Healthy ecosystems form the basis of all we have - lose them and we destroy our life support system," said Jonathan Baillie, ZSL''s conservation programme director.   "This is like spending the savings: we''re spending the natural capital we have on this planet," said Jim Leape, WWF''s director, at the launch of the report. "That''s an economic crisis in the making."   Measurements of the "ecological footprint" of different countries - the area required to provide the resources consumed by the population or average person in a year, compiled by the Global Footprint Network, shows the richest countries consume, on average, five times the quantity of natural resources as the poorest countries. At the extremes are the United Arab Emirates, with an average footprint of more than 10 hectares, and Timor-Leste at less than one hectare. The global average is about three hectares, and the UK figure is around five.   "There''s going to be global trade and that''s not always a bad thing," said Colin Butfield, head of campaigns for WWF. "But people in many subsistence countries depend on their local water source and if upstream you have got a big industrial cotton or soy growing plant, we''re starting to affect in many many cases around the world the ability for poor people to develop, feed themselves, industrialise, to supply basic products we use every day: soy beans for cattle, cotton for clothing, and so on.   "We''re also taking away the natural capital of those countries, and only a small number of people in those countries benefit."   The latest index compiled the results for nearly 8,000 populations of more than 2,500 different species of mammals, reptiles, amphibians, birds and fish. The real picture is, however, likely to be worse, because the latest report includes new populations, and because there are still many tropical species which have not been identified by scientists yet, said Butfield. It also does not directly measure the fate of plants, or pollution.   Nick Ross, the TV presenter who joined the launch event, called it "a bonfire of biodiversity".   "The trajectory is so alarming that even if people pick little holes in the methodology the message that comes across here is overwhelming," he said.   The report says the biggest impact on the global footprint of humanity is an 11-fold increase in carbon emissions in the last four decades. In another 40 years the footprint would double again, forecasted Leape.   The report, which is published just weeks before a major conference on slowing or halting the loss of biodiversity in Nagoya, Japan, calls for a series of changes to help address the problems, including more protected areas, zero net deforestation, eliminating overfishing and destructive fishing practices, and finding ways to put a value on biodiversity and ecosystem services.   There also needed to be more support to sustainable alternatives to modern consumption, such as timber, fish, soy, and other commodities from well-managed sources, said WWF.   Although government regulation was the "ideal" way to achieve this, consumers and businesses also needed to insist on such standards, said Butfield. "The reality of politics is government will only move a certain amount of the way, depending on how much they think consumers and businesses are behind them," he said. Visit the related web page
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