Gordon Brown’s climate change finance package hangs in balance

David Charter and Philip Webster
Gordon Brown’s plan for Europe to lead the world in tackling climate change stands on the brink of failure as a row about its cost threatens to overshadow the European Council.
The Prime Minister was the first to call for a $100 billion (£60 billion) fund to help emerging nations to meet the terms of the replacement for the Kyoto Protocol, to be finalised at a United Nations summit in December.
As part of this, he wants the EU to pledge €10 billion (£9 billion) a year to the fund, but two groups of member states are fighting to block the plan at the council on Thursday and Friday.
Britain, already facing a public spending squeeze, has offered to find €1 billion a year to help to fund the scheme from 2020.

Poland leads nine eastern countries that say they cannot afford to help other nations when they have so much to do to cut emissions in their own coal-based economies. They want the scheme to be voluntary, at least in its early years. Germany, meanwhile, leads others, including France and Italy, that feel it is wrong to put a price on the plan before Copenhagen.
Mr Brown has backing from the Netherlands and Denmark, the hosts of the Copenhagen climate change summit, for his view that there should be “no agreement without money”.
Britain will argue that if the EU starts to make its global commitment to climate change voluntary, it will be hard to get other countries to sign up to a mandatory global agreement.
EU leaders are expected to spend much of the summit settling their positions for Copenhagen after Alistair Darling’s failure last week to persuade finance ministers to agree funding. Speaking to The Times after that meeting, the Chancellor said: “It was a pity but the matter will come back to the European Council. We have to return to it because it is imperative we reach agreement in December.”
John Gormley, the Irish Environment Minister, speaking to the Europolitics website after the same meeting, added: “This is coming down to an issue about redistribution of wealth. In some ways it is inevitable that you will get tension between the newer member states and the old guard.”
After Mr Brown called for the fund, the Treasury said that about one third of the $100 billion could come from industrialised countries, including the EU, US and Japan, with half coming from the global carbon trading market plus and levies to cut aviation and maritime emissions. The remainder could be found by the richest developing countries, such as China.
The climate funding package is seen by green pressure groups as one of the biggest stumbling blocks to success in Copenhagen. “We do not think there will be a deal without the right funding package,” said Jeremy Hobbs, executive director of Oxfam International.