Doha Climate Summit off to a Rocky Start

Typography
The EU will not commit to renew climate funding which runs out in 2013 ahead of talks at the Doha climate summit, which opens today (26 November). But new climate aid may be announced in the conference’s second week. Development NGOs reacted angrily to an EU statement on 23 November which said only that in Doha, the EU would "discuss with its developing country partners how major flows of EU climate finance can continue in 2013-2014". "If the EU and other developed countries are serious about making climate action a reality for the period 2013-2020, they can't afford to come to Doha empty handed," Lies Craeynest, Oxfam’s EU policy adviser told EurActiv.

The EU will not commit to renew climate funding which runs out in 2013 ahead of talks at the Doha climate summit, which opens today (26 November). But new climate aid may be announced in the conference's second week. 

!ADVERTISEMENT! 

Development NGOs reacted angrily to an EU statement on 23 November which said only that in Doha, the EU would "discuss with its developing country partners how major flows of EU climate finance can continue in 2013-2014".

"If the EU and other developed countries are serious about making climate action a reality for the period 2013-2020, they can't afford to come to Doha empty handed," Lies Craeynest, Oxfam's EU policy adviser told EurActiv. "Vague promises to increase support in developing countries won't help communities who are facing the impacts of climate change now," she said.

Senior EU officials believe that most member states have factored climate aid into their medium term financial plans and leaders are likely to announce commitments at the conference itself.

"Normally, if it is about money, it is not the senior mandarin who will announce anything but his masters," the EU's chief climate negotiator Artur Runge-Metzger told a Brussels roundtable on 16 November.

Such declarations are often synched with the ebb and flow of negotiations.

"It will probably happen in the [conference's] second week," Runge-Metzger said, "and I don't think this will be a pledging exercise, just what is in the drawer at the present point in time and what has been agreed to in the next year and maybe the year after".

The UK and some other member states reportedly want to launch new initiatives that blend public and private funding sources. "I'm sure a lot of noise will be made about this in Doha," Runge-Metzger said.

Doha, Qatar photo via Shutterstock.

Read more at EurActive.