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Donors failing to deliver aid for climate adaptation - report

by Laurie Goering | @lauriegoering | Thomson Reuters Foundation
Wednesday, 17 November 2010 11:59 GMT

LONDON (AlertNet) - A promised $30 billion in "fast-start" climate change aid will go largely to emissions-curbing projects rather than efforts to help vulnerable nations adapt to more extreme weather and rising seas, new research suggests.

Only between 11 and 16 percent of the money pledged so far by wealthy countries will go to support climate adaptation actions such as building sea walls and promoting new farming practices, according to a report published on Wednesday by the London-based International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED).

Under a non-binding accord reached at U.N. climate talks in Copenhagen last December, donor nations agreed that the "fast-start" funding would be split in a balanced way between adaptation and mitigation.

But just $3 billion of the $30 billion promised for the period 2010 to 2012 has been clearly allocated for adaptation projects in the world's poorest countries, and some of the commitments are in the form of loans rather than grants, the report said. It noted that this estimate was "very rough and perhaps low", partly due to a lack of information from donors.

David Ciplet, a researcher at Brown University and one of the report's authors, warned that, so far, "the big promises for adaptation funding made at Copenhagen are not being met".

"Adaptation is absolutely crucial for the billions of people who face the rising intensity of climate disasters," he said.

Mitigation projects have won a much larger share of support, the report found. That is largely because efforts to reduce emissions are generally bigger, older and better established, while many adaptation efforts are small, local and new, said J. Timmons Roberts, director of the Center for Environmental Studies at Brown University and another of the report's authors.

Changing that mix to ensure adaptation programmes receive a larger share of funding is key, the report said.

'ANYTHING GOES'

Tracking whether the pledged climate funds are new or recycled from other aid commitments is also difficult, warned the report's authors, who called for an independent registry of climate change-related projects under the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

"Industrialised nations seem to think they can get away with an 'anything goes' approach, where whatever they describe as adaptation funding counts," said Roberts. "The danger is that existing development projects that are not specific responses to the threat of climate change will simply be relabelled as climate adaptation projects."

In many cases, donor governments have not specified how the money being provided is "new and additional" to existing aid commitments, raising concerns it could be recycled from other aid programmes.

The report's findings suggest that vulnerable countries like Bangladesh - where millions of people could be displaced by rising sea levels, worsening storm surges and other climate-related problems - may not get the assistance they need, and will be forced to spend a growing share of their national income on dealing with climate disasters.

"Government support is very limited. The government tries its best but there are so many people and people really suffer," said Muhammed Chowdhury, a Bangladesh climate negotiator.

As the low-lying South Asian country celebrates Eid this week, tens of thousands of people displaced by Cyclone Aila in 2009 and Cyclone Sidr in 2007 are still living in shacks on roadsides, waiting for protective embankments to be rebuilt so they can return home, he said.

Other regions of Bangladesh are desperately racing to build protective dams to stop farmland being lost to sea erosion, and struggling to find new salt-resistant crops.

"Bangladesh is facing GDP (gross domestic product) erosion every year from the adverse impacts of climate change, which was caused by the richest industrialised countries over the centuries. The government has to cut back their scarce budget resources from anti-poverty programmes to tackle climate-induced catastrophies," Chowdhury said.

PROGRESS AT CANCUN?

The good news, according to report author Roberts, is that with expectations already low for the upcoming Cancun climate talks, which begin in late November, negotiators will be looking for small victories, and sorting out climate aid could be one of them.

"Cancun is really going to be crucial to keeping this issue moving forward," he said. "It's been a tough year and (the negotiations) are in danger of entirely collapsing. This is a way people can show some real progress."

With climate aid already beginning to flow - $14 million was approved for initial projects in Senegal and Honduras in September using adaptation funds raised from a levy on U.N. carbon credits - Roberts said there was a need to get "some kind of system in place fast" to track donations and spending.

"The only way to keep money coming in is to assure people it's being used well on the other end," he said. "Transparency really makes a difference."

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