Mexico urges EU and other powers to deliver on climate aid pledges

Mar 15, 2010, 13:28 GMT

Brussels - The European Union and other developed nations must deliver on climate aid pledges made to developing countries, the host of the next world summit on climate change in Cancun, Mexico, said on Monday.

Mexico's Environment Minister, Juan Rafael Elvira Quesada, was referring in particular to the 10 billion dollars per year the EU, the United States and Japan promised to give as 'fast track' funding for 2010-2012 as part of the deal reached at global talks in Copenhagen last December.

'The developing world needs to see clear signals to have something in their hands at Cancun,' Elvira said in Brussels, where he met EU environment ministers.

He also said that a London meeting in April of the United Nations panel set up to mobilize long-term climate aid will be 'really important to show what is happening on financial transfers to the developing world.'

The EU has put on the table a 10-billion-dollar-a-year contribution to fast track funding, and the bloc's finance ministers are expected to confirm the commitment when they meet in Brussels on Tuesday.

Coming on the heels of the much-derided Copenhagen talks, which only produced a voluntary agreement by a select group of nations to curb their greenhouse-gas emissions, the Cancun talks are not expected to produce a new international treaty against climate change.

'Mexico wants to act as a bridge between the North and the South, between the East and the West ... and to bring concrete results. What legal form these concrete results will have we don't know, it's too early to say,' Elvira stressed.

He said progress is expected on funding to stop deforestation, on fast-track and long-term financing, and on ways to keep the current Kyoto Protocol on climate change alive until a new treaty is agreed.

After attending talks in India and Bali, Elvira said developing nations 'require another type of agreement before the Kyoto Protocol can disappear.'

In particular, he said Mexico had a 'special dedication' to the most powerful developing states, Brazil, China, India and South Africa, who were among the key architects of the Copenhagen deal.

'We want to understand their position and invite them to be part of the solution,' Elvira said.

Cancun is scheduled to start in late November. Elvira said that for the moment Mexico plans to invite environment ministers only, leaving out heads of state unless an unexpected deal on a legally binding treaty is found.

Germany's deputy environment minister, Katherina Reiche, added her skepticism to the doubts already expressed last week by the EU's climate action commissioner, Connie Hedegaard.

'I'm not counting on getting a complete deal in Mexico, but the steps to it must be clearly defined: what's possible within the UN, where our partners are and how far will we be able to go,' she said ahead of the talks with Elvira.