Europe Tamps Down Expectations on Climate Funds

By JAMES KANTER

September 11, 2009

BRUSSELS — The European Union’s commissioner for the environment sought Thursday to tamp down expectations that wealthy nations would immediately hand over vast sums of money demanded by developing countries to manage global warming.

Such funds “cannot be a blank check,” the commissioner, Stavros Dimas, said at a news conference.

José Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission, the E.U.’s executive body, said fast-emerging economies should be expected to do more to finance efforts to combat climate change.

“I am determined that Europe will continue to provide a lead, but developed and economically advanced developing countries must also make a contribution,” said Mr. Barroso, apparently hinting at greater efforts by countries like China.

Under the plan, E.U. member nations would pay €2 billion to €15 billion, or $22 million, annually by 2020 from their national budgets to help the developing world with clean and efficient energy and deal with droughts, disease and crop failures.

Mr. Dimas said he reached the figures using a formula based on gross domestic product and emissions levels. He said the wide range was the result of different ways of balancing the criteria.

Applying the same formula, which was made available Thursday by the European Commission, the United States would contribute about €3 billion to €12 billion annually by 2020.

Leaders of environmental groups in Europe praised Mr. Dimas for putting concrete figures on the table, saying it could help to avoid gridlock ahead of important talks on agreeing to a new climate treaty by December at a United Nations meeting in Copenhagen.

Europe’s offer is important because developing countries have refused to pledge emission cuts as part of a global treaty unless wealthier parts of the world — like Europe, the United States and Japan, which are responsible for historic emissions — help them adapt to the effects of warming and upgrade their energy technologies.

Even so, environmentalists said Mr. Dimas’s offer fell woefully short of what was needed to persuade the developing world to join a new treaty.

Advocates also said the offer was grossly inadequate to the task of helping poorer nations deal with global warming.

“The E.U. is trying to get away with leaving a tip, rather than paying its share of the bill to protect the planet’s climate,” said Joris den Blanken, the climate and energy policy director for Greenpeace in Europe.

In particular, Mr. den Blanken criticized Mr. Dimas for abandoning earlier drafts of the document that he said indicated that the E.U. should contribute €13 billion to €24 billion annually.

Mr. den Blanken said Mr. Dimas backtracked, in part, to help win eventual approval of the package from some member states. He said some E.U. countries were wary of putting large sums of money on the table before wealthy nations in other parts of the world made their offers.

Jason Anderson, the head of European climate policy for WWF, another prominent environmental group, said Europe would need to dramatically increase its offer to ensure that the developing world received adequate funding.

But some experts said Mr. Dimas’s offer was politically realistic and that it could be raised in negotiations.

“I hope it’s an opening gambit,” said Bernice Lee, an expert in energy and environment at Chatham House, a research group in London, who explained that the amounts were lower than what she had expected E.U. countries would spend on helping the developing world.

“I assume the commission is, at this point, testing the political appetite among key member states in Europe to see if they can offer more and still win their approval,” she said.

Mr. Dimas said Thursday that the total cost of helping the developing world would be about €100 billion annually by 2020. Wealthy nations would need to dig into their public finances to contribute up to half that amount, Mr. Dimas said.

He said the private sector would pick up most of the remainder through initiatives like emissions-trading programs that encourage companies to invest in green technologies in the developing world.

Mr. Dimas also underlined that developing countries could attract large amounts of investment by taking their own steps to improve their energy efficiency.

E.U. member states have already agreed to cut their own emissions by a fifth by 2020. But they have yet to agree on how to share the burden of fighting climate change globally.

Member states are expected to review Mr. Dimas’s proposals in October.