Poor countries get access to carbon-credits funds

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our or .

| Sourced From |
POZNAN: Poor countries will now have the legal capacity in having direct access to a global facility that funds projects aimed at easing the effects of global warming.

The United Nations Climate Change Conference (UNFCC) in Poland ended in mid-December with a clear commitment from governments to shift into full negotiating mode next year in order to shape an ambitious and effective international response to climate change.

Nations will meet in Copenhagen in December 2009 to hammer out stricter emission standards after 2012.

In 2007, governments agreed to consider a greenhouse gas emission reduction range of minus 25 to minus 40 per- cent over 1990 levels.

The Poznan conference put finishing touches to the Kyoto Protocol’s Adaptation Fund so that it gets ready to receive concrete projects next year.

It was agreed that the fund would have a legal capacity granting developing countries direct access.

Under the fund, projects that reduce greenhouse gas emissions in developing countries can earn certified emission reduction (CER) credits. Countries with a commitment under the Kyoto Protocol buy CERs to cover a portion of their emission reduction commitments under the treaty.

There are more than 1,240 registered projects in 51 countries, and about another 3,000 projects in the pipeline.

The fund is expected to generate more than 2.9 billion CERs by the time the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol ends in 2012, each equivalent to 1 ton of carbon dioxide.

In Poznan, the Philippines bared plants to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 80 percent by 2050.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has urged industrialized countries to cut greenhouse gas emissions from 1990 levels down to 40 percent by 2020 in order to prevent global warming.

President-elect Barack Obama wants to reduce US emissions by 80 percent by 2050 and invest $150 billion in new energy-saving technologies.

“We will now move to the next level of negotiations, which involves crafting a concrete negotiating text for the agreed outcome,” said Polish Minister of the Environment Maciej Nowicki who presided over the conference. “Poznan is the place where the partnership between the developing and developed world to fight climate change has shifted beyond rhetoric and turned into real action.”

“In addition to having agreed the work program for next year, we have cleared the decks of many technical issues,” he said.

A key event at the conference was a ministerial roundtable on a shared vision for long-term cooperative action on climate change.

“Governments have sent a strong political signal that despite the financial and economic crisis, significant funds can be mobilized for both mitigation and adaptation in developing countries with the help of a clever financial architecture and the institutions to deliver the financial support,” said Yvo de Boer, UNFCC executive secretary.

The UNFCCC is the parent treaty of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol which legally binds industrialized countries to reduce and limit emissions of greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide, that cause global warming. The aim is to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that will prevent dangerous human interference with the climate system.

“We now have a much clearer sense of where we need to go in designing an outcome which will spell out the commitments of developed countries, the financial support required and the institutions that will deliver that support as part of the Copenhagen outcome,” he added.

In Poznan, progress was made on a number of issues, including adaptation, finance, technology and reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation.

The conference discussed in detail the issue of disaster management, risk assessment and insurance, essential to help developing countries cope with the inevitable effects of climate change.

The Poznan conference, with 11,600 participants from 189 countries, constitutes the halfway mark in the negotiations on an international response to climate change, to be agreed in Copenhagen at the end of 2009 and to take effect in 2013, the year after the first phase of the Kyoto Protocol expires.

“Scientists share the view that warming in excess of 2 degrees Celsius will result in irreversible changes to nearly all ecosystems and the human communities,” said Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk. “We shoulder the responsibility to prevent changes that could lastingly disturb the symbiosis between humankind and nature.”