Brussels, 27/01/2009 (Agence Europe) - The European Commission will, on Wednesday 28 January, present its recipe for the success expected by the EU of the UN conference on climate change in Copenhagen (COP-15). The aim of this conference, in December of this year, is to reach an international agreement on how to tackle climate change after the expiry on the Kyoto Protocol in 2012.
The communication to be adopted by the College of Commissioners on reaching a new global agreement on climate change will be the Commission's response to the Council request of December 2008 (when the climate change/energy package was adopted) to provide the European Union with a comprehensive strategy to make better use of resources and investment flows not only for combating climate change, but also for adapting to global warming throughout the world. The aim is to allow the EU to enter the home straight in a strong negotiating position and to continue to lead the world by example.
The document will focus, then, on ways to reduce global emissions and, above all, on flows of public financing to be generated so that the industrialised countries have the means to help developing countries fund adaptation to something for which they are not responsible, but of which they have already become the first victims.
The Commission is expected to propose that the emissions reduction target for the EU (and all industrialised countries) should be raised to 30% by 2020, compared with 1990, and that developing countries undertake to reduce their respective emissions by 15-30% compared with “business as usual”.
Money being the sinews of war, the Commission is likely to recommend that the international community gradually increase its investment in greenhouse gas emissions reduction, reaching some €175 billion per year by 2020. Of this amount, €30 billion per year would be to help developing countries in their efforts (€10 billion for clean energy, €10 for adaptation to climate change, and €10 billion to combat deforestation and deterioration of forests, through a multilateral forest fund, with the €10 billion initial allocation in 2013 gradually rising to €20 billion by 2020). The document will set out details of the funding mechanisms envisaged by the Commission.
It will be for EU member states to reach agreement on these proposals. Environment ministers will discuss them at the Environment Council on 2 March. Then it will be for economy and finance ministers to do likewise at the Ecofin Council of 10 March, before heads of state and government reach a final decision at the European Council on 19-20 March. (A.N./transl.rt)