Rich nations fail to honour climate pledge

[Orwellian_Ghost]

A group of rich countries including Britain has broken a promise to pay mor than a billion dollars to help the developing world cope with the effects o climate change. The group agreed in 2001 to pay $1.2bn (£600m) to hel poor and vulnerable countries predict and plan for the effects of global warming as well as fund flood defences, conservation and thousands of other projects. Bu new figures show less than £90m of the promised money has been delivered Britain has so far paid just £10m

The disclosure comes after Gordon Brown said this week that industrialised countries must do more to help the developing world adapt to a changed climate, and two weeks before countries meet in Bali to begin negotiations on a new global deal to regulate emissions which is expected to stress the need for all countries to adapt.

Andrew Pendleton, climate change policy analyst at Christian Aid, said: "This represents a broken promise on a massive scale and on quite a cynical scale as well. Promising funds for adaptation is exactly the kind of incentive the rich countries will offer at Bali to bring the developing world on board a new climate deal. This is the signal we are seeing on all fronts, that the developed countries are unwilling to fulfil their moral and legal commitments."

Under the terms of the climate adaptation agreement, made at a UN meeting in Bonn in 2001, the EU, Canada, Norway, Switzerland, Iceland and New Zealand said they would jointly pay developing countries $410m (£200m) each year from 2005 to 2008. They called on other countries to donate as well. The money was supposed to compensate developing countries for the severe effects over the coming decades of global warming, which is largely caused by carbon emissions from the developed world.

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/nov/24/climatechange.greenpolitics