UN secretary general calls for increase in pledged funding for climate change

$100bn on offer is 'good start' but not enough, says Ban Ki-moon
Damian Carrington
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 3 November 2009 13.18 GMT
Money paid by rich countries to fight global warming will have to "be scaled up" from the $100bn a year on offer, the UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon said today.
Finance is the key, said Ban, to successful negotations on a global treaty to fight climate change, due to conclude at UN talks next month in Copenhagen.
Ban also revealed that he will next week meet all the US Senators involved in deliberations over the energy and climate bill. Agreement on that bill is seen as vital to negotiations, as without it the US team in Copenhagen will have little domestic mandate to agree a deal. The announcement of the personal intervention of the secretary general is a clear sign of the importance of the matter.
However, in a separate development, Democratic leaders in the Senate conceded today they would not attempt to vote through climate change legislation before Copenhagen. Barbara Boxer, the chair of the environment and public works committee, said the final draft of a climate change bill would be submitted to the US Environmental Protection Agency for a five-week analysis before being put to a vote. That in effect rules out a Senate vote before Copenhagen starts on 7 December.
Gordon Brown was praised by Ban as having originated the $100bn figure for the total global public and private funding needed each year by 2020 to tackle climate change. It would be spent on cutting emissions by providing green technologies, and on enabling countries to adapt to more frequent fierce storms and rising sea levels. The figure was adopted last week by the European Union as its official negotiating position for Copenhagen and is the only offer on the table so far.

Ban says that the $100bn figure 'should be scaled up as we go along'
"I think it can be a good start but it needs to be scaled up," said Ban.
Development groups have estimated the money needed at up to $400bn a year. But the amount by which it would need to increase was uncertain, he said: "We have to see how measures are effective. As time goes by we may need to change arrangements."
Ban's senior climate adviser, Janos Pasztor, added: "The needs are obviously much larger and it needs to be scaled up."
Developing nations are demanding significant new funding at the climate negotiations, which are continuing this week in Barcelona, and deep cuts in rich country emissions in exchange for pledges to curb their own fast-growing carbon emissions.
Problems in the talks erupted in public today with African nations boycotting meetings, forcing their cancellation. They want rich nations to commit to much bigger cuts in their emissions than they have so far, arguing that African countries will suffer most from global warming yet are least responsible.
Ban said last week that the negotiations were "gridlocked" but today said that "significant" progress was being made. A critical issue, he said, was a lack of trust between developed and developing nations, which a suitably large financial settlement would help to bridge.
"Too many countries have domestic problems," he added, without naming the US and the difficulty President Obama faces getting his climate bill through the Senate. Ban also revealed that he had met all the committee members of the House of Representatives both individually and collectively, before the it passed its climate bill.
The new extended timetable announced by Boxer – an attempt to win Republican support – is bound to dismay Ban as well as European leaders in Washington today to try to press the US to act on climate change.
The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, is scheduled to address a joint session of the Senate and house later today on climate change, Afghanistan and other issues.
Boxer had been struggling with fellow Republicans on her committee who want more time to participate in producing a draft climate change bill, and object to some key measure it contains.
The near-boycott by Republicans and criticism from conservative Democrats in the environment committee have sharply reduced the prospects for passing a rigorous climate change law at all – let alone before Copenhagen.
Earlier, Ban confirmed there is now no chance that the Copenhagen summit will produce a legally binding agreement, as there is too little time to work through all the complex details. "Copenhagen will not be the final word." Instead a "politically binding" agreement must be reached, he said, with strong consensus on cutting greenhouse gas emissions, helping nations adapt to a warmer world and finance and technology funds. Ban joins the UN's top climate official, Yvo de Boer, Merkel and the UK government in conceding that a legally enforceable treaty is now unreachable at Copenhagen.
But he said: "We don't have a plan B and we are not lowering the bar. We still [retain] the highest possible targets."