Everyone has their hand out......

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China, India lead demand for extra help in climate change struggle

China and India next week will spearhead calls for rich nations to dig

into their pockets to tackle climate change but will resist targeted

curbs on their own carbon emissions, sources say.

The 12-day UN climate talks, starting in Poland on Monday, are a

stepping stone towards an international pact, due to be completed by

the end of 2009, for addressing climate change beyond 2012.

China, India and other developing countries will articulate a top

priority, according to sources in Beijing and New Delhi.

In a nutshell, wealthy economies must boost financial support to help

poorer countries gain access to cleaner technology and cope with the

impact of climate change.

"Developing countries are saying that if you expect us to make

measurable, reportable and verifiable action, there has to be

measurable, reportable and verifiable money on the table," UN climate

chief Yvo de Boer told AFP from Bonn.

China this year proposed that developed nations earmark 0.7 percent of

their gross domestic product (GDP) to help developing countries tackle

climate change.

That demand is expected to be raised again in Poznan next week, with

India and other developing nations backing China, say the sources.

"It will be on the table at Poznan... India supports the Chinese

proposal," said an Indian government official who will attend the

talks but asked to remain anonymous.

China's big focus is for developed nations to help developing

countries create and expand access to renewable energy and other smart

technologies.

"Developed countries should have a technology transfer fund in their

budgets," said Zhou Ji, a professor at the People's University of

China who advises the Chinese government on climate change.

Li Yan, a China-based climate change campaigner with Greenpeace

, said she expected the issue of financing to be "hotly debated" in

Poznan, with the global economic crisis making it an even more

troublesome issue.

She told AFP developing countries were looking for concrete plans on

how the money would be allocated and where it would be spent, and not

just vague ideas as so far have been proposed.

"For developing countries, controlling greenhouse gas emissions is

closely linked to how much support they get from industrialised

countries," said Li, who will attend the talks as an observer.

Even so, China and India are not expected to yield to years of

pressure from richer nations and agree to specific targets for curbing

their emissions of the greenhouse gases.

"China won't commit to any cuts in greenhouse gas emission at this

meeting," said Zhou.

Developing countries have long maintained that their rise out of

poverty could be prejudiced by a legal straitjacket on their carbon

emissions.

The pollution mainly comes from burning fossil fuels, which are the

backbone of the world's energy supply and likely to remain so for years.

They also argue that industrialised nations are historically

responsible for the greenhouse gases already in the environment, and

so must do more to fix the problem.

India will not budge on this at the Poland talks, according to the

Indian official.

"We, India, are clear that we also have to take action. But... we

cannot stop development just because one group of countries has caused

damage," he said.

Developing countries were excluded from binding targets for greenhouse

gases under the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which was the main reason the

United States refused to ratify the treaty.

But ensuring China and India take action of some kind has become

increasingly important in recent years. Their carbon output has risen

dramatically in tandem with the booms in their oil- and coal-dependent

economies.

China now outstrips the United States as the world's biggest

greenhouse gas polluter while India is poised to overtake Russia as

the third biggest emitter, according to a report published in

September by the Global Carbon Project, a widely-respected barometer.

The world's two most populous nations insist they have not ignored the

issue, with China for example winning some praise for setting a goal

of 15 percent for renewables in its energy mix by 2020.

"Both China and India over the past couple of years have been working

very hard to develop national climate change strategies that contain

very specific goals on mitigation and adaptation," noted de Boer,

executive secretary of the UN's Framework Convention on Climate Change

(UNFCCC).

posted to ClimateConcern by Ross Mayhew