December 04, 2007
From correspondents in Bali
Agence France-Presse
REPRESENTATIVES from some of the world's poorest nations today appealed for help in dealing with crippling floods, droughts and other extreme weather caused by climate change.
As nearly 190 countries gathered on Indonesia's resort island of Bali to try and hammer out a plan for creating a fresh pact to combat global warming, poor countries said any new deal must give them more money.
"Financially we do not have enough to adapt to the impact," said Thy Sum, a conference delegate from Cambodia's Climate Change Office.
"We need to call on the rich countries to provide meaningful financial and technical support to cope with climate change."
A landmark paper by the Nobel-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said earlier this year that while industrialised countries were largely to blame for global warming, least developed nations would suffer most.
The group of scientists warned that damage to the Earth's weather systems this century would doom poor countries to worse hunger, water stress and damage from violent storms, droughts and floods.
Such dire consequences were already being felt in some countries, experts in Bali said.
"What we are experiencing in Bangladesh is exactly what the climate change scientists are predicting," said Mozaharul Alam, from the Bangladesh Centre for Advanced Studies.
Bangladesh saw at least 3400 people killed in a cyclone last month, with hundreds more missing feared dead and 360,000 left homeless.
Relief agency Oxfam said aid to poor nations to deal with climate change were "an insult", and poor countries needed $US50 billion ($56.9bn) a year to adapt to global warming.
"We believe the rich and the most polluting countries should pay the vast share of that money," said Oxfam campaigner Charlotte Sterrett.
For Ursula Rakova, an activist from the low-lying Carteret Islands in Papua New Guinea, the need is immediate.
Rising sea levels are forcing island residents out of their homes and on to the mainland where food, medicine and education need to be paid for.
"Our atolls are shrinking, the population is getting bigger. We don't have any land any more," she said on the sidelines of the Bali meeting, which runs until December 11.
Delegates aim to agree on an agenda for negotiations for a new pact to come into effect when the current phase of the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012.
As nearly 190 countries gathered on Indonesia's resort island of Bali to try and hammer out a plan for creating a fresh pact to combat global warming, poor countries said any new deal must give them more money.
"Financially we do not have enough to adapt to the impact," said Thy Sum, a conference delegate from Cambodia's Climate Change Office.
"We need to call on the rich countries to provide meaningful financial and technical support to cope with climate change."
A landmark paper by the Nobel-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said earlier this year that while industrialised countries were largely to blame for global warming, least developed nations would suffer most.
The group of scientists warned that damage to the Earth's weather systems this century would doom poor countries to worse hunger, water stress and damage from violent storms, droughts and floods.
Such dire consequences were already being felt in some countries, experts in Bali said.
"What we are experiencing in Bangladesh is exactly what the climate change scientists are predicting," said Mozaharul Alam, from the Bangladesh Centre for Advanced Studies.
Bangladesh saw at least 3400 people killed in a cyclone last month, with hundreds more missing feared dead and 360,000 left homeless.
Relief agency Oxfam said aid to poor nations to deal with climate change were "an insult", and poor countries needed $US50 billion ($56.9bn) a year to adapt to global warming.
"We believe the rich and the most polluting countries should pay the vast share of that money," said Oxfam campaigner Charlotte Sterrett.
For Ursula Rakova, an activist from the low-lying Carteret Islands in Papua New Guinea, the need is immediate.
Rising sea levels are forcing island residents out of their homes and on to the mainland where food, medicine and education need to be paid for.
"Our atolls are shrinking, the population is getting bigger. We don't have any land any more," she said on the sidelines of the Bali meeting, which runs until December 11.
Delegates aim to agree on an agenda for negotiations for a new pact to come into effect when the current phase of the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012.
1 comment:
Well, same as usual: Cambodia is begging for money. On the other hand: Why do they invite other countries to build coal fired energy plants, which are the big, big polluters? Why don't they stop deforestation and invite the international communty to build a renewable energy infrastructure in cambodia?
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