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Copenhagen round up

Daniel Cressey; cross-posted from The Great Beyond

road to copenhagen.jpgThe European Union has agreed to provide 2.4 billion euros per year from 2010 to 2012 for ‘fast start funding’ to get climate mitigation projects off the ground in developing countries. EU leaders say they want a total of 7 billion euros per year coughed up internationally.

“The EU has now taken on a significant share of the total amount and has shown leadership on the issue. Now we want to encourage the rest of the world to contribute to reach 7 billion. It would be good if we could get an agreement on this in Copenhagen”, says Fredrik Reinfeldt, the Swedish prime minister (press release).

Europe’s move garnered praise from the UN’s top climate man, Yvo de Boer.

A “first draft text” is also circulating. It offers a range of potential targets (BBC, Bloomberg, Washington Post, Reuters). The Washington Post have kindly uploaded a PDF of the document and here is the key bit:

copenhagen text.bmp


ENDS has a nice comparison of the circulating Chinese and Danish texts.

Meanwhile, Lumumba di-Aping, chief negotiator of the China and the G77 group of nations, has called on US politicians to help developing nations access funds the International Monetary Fund holds in reserve. This idea was initially proposed by billionaire George Soros.

“The American Congress has to be asked: you approve billions of dollars in defence budgets. Can’t you approve $200bn to save the world?” says di-Aping (Daily Telegraph).

According to some reports di-Aping also stormed out of negotiations yesterday saying “things are not going well” and the meeting “will probably be wrecked by the bad intentions of some people”.

Finally, the BBC reports that China’s climate minister is not happy as he’s been turned away from the conference centre three times by the guards.

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