Climate Financing Vital to G20 Meeting Success, But Increasingly Pushed Aside

After a disappointing UN climate summit speech that expounded on the dangers of global warming but offered no new U.S. commitments to stop it, President Obama has one more chance this week to take charge as a climate leader as the international action moves to Pittsburgh for a two-day G20 meeting.

When Obama organized the Pittsburgh gathering of the world's wealthiest nations, he tasked the G20 finance ministers with developing a plan for rich countries to help developing nations deploy clean energy and adapt to climate change.

The divide between developed and developing nations over that funding has become one of the largest barriers to a new climate agreement at Copenhagen in December.

It also appears to be increasingly pushed down the G20 agenda, behind the global economic recovery and even bankers' bonuses. Rather than financing, President Obama has focused his G20 statements on a new proposal to phase out fossil fuel subsidies instead.

"It's time for heads of state to step up as world leaders and start putting adequate figures on the tables," said Barbara Stocking, CEO of Oxfam Great Britain, whose group is calling for a commitment of $150 billion a year for developing nations.

"We do not have the luxury of time with climate change. Too long have these negotiations been treated like trade talks, with countries watching out for their own individual interests."

World's Wallets Still Closed as Costs Rise

Wealthy nations promised in 2001 to provide the 49 least developed countries $2 billion for immediate climate change adaptation, but they only funded about a 10th of that. Since then, the UNFCCC has estimated the cost of global adaptation to be between $40 billion and $170 billion a year through 2030, and more recent studies now suggest the costs will be far higher — with the price growing each year the world delays action on climate change.

Developing nations are already feeling the pain, as Ugandan farmer Constance Okollet described to UN members this week. Okollet talked about hunger, death and cholera in her village amid increasingly extreme weather:

"I ask world leaders to help my community fight the climate change that destroys our houses, increases diseases and stops our children from attending schools," she said. "They must cut their emissions so that we can look forward to planting our crops without having to face floods that wash them away, or droughts that stop them growing at all."

At the UN summit, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown called for a $100 billion commitment from developed countries to help the developing nations like Okollet's. He urged the world to act immediately, "Not later, at another conference, in another decade, after we have lost 10 years to inaction and delay."

Wealthy nations have been slow to step up, though. The EU released the first proposal with solid numbers just this month, offering between $3 billion and $25 billion, less than initial drafts of the plan had discussed.

And the U.S. commitment? The Obama administration's has failed "to even acknowledge (much less ask Congress for) the kind of funding that will be needed to put the developing world on a low-carbon pathway," notes Sierra Club Executive Director Carl Pope.