BY MOHAMMAD SHOEB
DOHA: With the limited time left for the countries to make legally binding commitments for emission cuts, Qatar may contribute to the Green Climate Fund (GCF) to play a lead role by sending a message to the developed countries, a senior official of Oxfam said yesterday.
“Qatari government might make a contribution to the GCF. It will be wonderful for the Gulf state to contribute first to the Fund which will put a lot of pressure on the rich industrialised countries and will also work as a confidence building measure for others”, Phil Bloomer, Director, Campaign and Policy at Oxfam GB told The Peninsula on the sidelines of UNFCCC, COP18 (CMP8).
Bloomer added that the initiative will also send a “strong message’ to the developing countries that there is an opportunity for genuine negotiations on the principles of “equality and equity”.
The climate finance issue is critical. But what is more critical now is missing of the small funding and the promised Green Climate fund that was put on the table earlier, but three year later not a cent has gone to the fund for the future.
“There would be injustice of any deal made that does not include finance. Poor countries are now facing a fiscal cliff in terms of their ability to adapt to climate change. And unless that financing is available, there will be no way in which there will be any deal done” added he.
Bloomer was here to speak at the ongoing historic climate change conference.
He also expressed his apprehension about the scope of the negotiations and said that ‘COP18’ is not going to be a “breakthrough movement”.
“We all live in a hope that it will be, but what is very important is that this summit must build the foundations of a robust platform on which negotiations can continue to be able to reach to a binding agreement till 2015”.
He suggested that the governments really need to start actively listening to each other. Particularly the rich countries have to start understanding the importance of finance and take measures to build trust.
One of the biggest obstacles that the negotiations on climate change is facing is that developing and poor countries are in desperate need for finance to be able to both adapt to the massive challenge of climate change bringing untold sufferings. So the urgency of moving on for climate change is obvious.
Developing countries need to get to a low carbon development path and to be able to build industries that do not lead to kind of emissions that industrialized countries are doing.
The major emitters of the world, with all the historical emissions that have been there are principally the Europe and the United States, which still refuse to make ambitious targets.
While commenting on a question, it justified to expect further emissions cuts from countries like China and India when they have about three billion people to feed?, he said: “As per Oxfam calculations, China, and to some extent India, are among some of the developing countries that have already made greater pledges than developed countries.”
The Peninsula
