Tiempo Climate Newswatch

The European Union (EU) is committing €90 million of funding covering poverty reduction and climate change to Pacific island states as the new EU-Pacific Action Plan on Climate Change is signed. The EU-Pacific action plan would require participants to embrace "joint positions on the international stage." Isaac Valero-Ladron, climate spokesman for the EU, commented that "if we put money on the table, it really creates a constructive atmosphere and good policies."

"Climate change and natural disasters are putting a brake on sustainable development, economic growth and progress towards meeting the Millennium Development Goals in the Pacific," EU development commissioner Andris Piebalgs said, ahead of the High-Level Regional Conference on Climate Change in the Pacific in Vanuatu. "It is time for us to take the lead in rallying substantial international community support for the Pacific's climate change adaptation efforts," he continued. Only a small percentage of the €90 million finance is directly related to climate measures. A third of the funding will go towards strengthening Pacific integration through trade. A total of €8 million will support mangrove replanting, watershed reforestation, rainwater harvesting and other adaptation projects. The remainder is committed to disaster risk reduction and integrated management of coastal, terrestrial and marine environments.

The sixth Carbon Market Survey from Point Carbon has concluded that the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS) is gaining wider acceptance, but has only reduced pollution by major energy companies by a small amount. Power companies have been receiving free credits but this concession will end in 2013.

"We are seeing incremental changes, not revolutionary changes," commented Endre Tvinnereim from Point Carbon. Most of the emissions reductions over the past two years reported by survey participants were of less than five per cent. The cybertheft of carbon credits earlier this year does not appear to have adversely affected confidence in the scheme. "There was talk about the EU ETS having been discredited. However, our survey shows quite the reverse," Tvinnereim said. The Point Carbon survey was based on 2535 responses from carbon market participants and observers in 101 countries.

By the next major climate summit, to be held in Durban, South Africa, at the end of the year, governments need to agree a way to cut global emissions about twice as fast as already promised and increase the certainty that they will do as they say, according to Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. She warned that commitments to date only amount to 60 per cent of what is required by the year 2020 to hold global warming below two degrees Celsius. Emissions need to peak by 2015 to meet the agreed temperature goal.

Governments must also resolve the remaining issues over the future of the Kyoto Protocol, Figueres said. "We need to keep in mind that the Kyoto Protocol remains the only working, binding international model to reduce emissions, and nations have an urgent task to decide how to take forward the protocol's unique benefits of transparency, certainty, compliance in handling national emission targets, and common but differentiated responsibilities," she explained.