Climate change: LDCs group make financial demands from rich nations

NaijaAgroNet:

The group of Least Developed Countries (LDCs) at the United Nations (UN) Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), may be spoiling for war as they are demanding climate finance figures from rich nations before December 2013.

Chairman of the LDCs group, Prakash Mathema of Nepal, made this disclosure to NaijaAgroNet at the end of international negotiations under the UNFCCC, insisting that greater financial transparency was needed to implement action to tackle climate change.

This, LDCs group said the industrialised nations should provide detailed information about the finance they are willing to provide to help the vulnerable adapt to climate change.

The LDC Group requests each industrialised country to provide information on the levels of finance they have provided in 2013 and how much they will provide in future years. The group requests this information to include precise allocations for adaptation specifically, along with a breakdown of how much finance is for the LDCs.

The LDCs requested that the richer nations provide this information at COP19, the 19th Conference of Parties to the UNFCCC, which takes place in Warsaw at the end of the year.

As said by LDC Chairman, they expressed deepest appreciation to the Annex 1 Parties who have made substantial contributions towards supporting adaptation in the LDCs.

“But there is too much uncertainty about where the future funds will come from. Delayed climate action and lack of ambition to close the mitigation gap will cost more tomorrow than today. We need to move to a sustainable climate smart pathway where life is possible for all and for generations to come,” he said.

Further, the LDCs, with their weak adaptive capacity and their extreme vulnerability to the adverse impacts of climate change, have already witnessed many catastrophic climate disasters and these events are going to be more frequent, intense and unpredictable.

“We are all aware of the fact that the level of concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has reached 400 parts per million, the highest level for some three million years. This is alarming. We lament the failure of parties to launch the negotiations under the UNFCCC’s subsidiary body for implementation at the UN negotiations which ended Monday,  November 11, 2013 in Bonn," he said.

This, LDCs said is of grave concern to the group as issues of implementation are key for the LDCs.

“We expect this not to happen again at COP19 in Warsaw later this year. Communities around the world have high expectations regarding this process and hope that we, as climate ambassadors, will take some bold decisions very soon to protect humanity from the adverse impacts of climate change. To implement such decisions, financial support is key. We need to act now and we need to act together,” the group said.

Isaac Oyimah/GEE
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