EU pledges billions for post-Kyoto climate deal

BRUSSELS (Reuters/AFP) - Europe could pay poor countries up to 15 billion euros ($22 billion) a year by 2020 to persuade them to help battle climate change, the European Unions executive arm said on Thursday.
Developing countries say industrialised nations should shoulder most of the cost of tackling a problem they caused in the first place, creating a big stumbling block in negotiations ahead of a global climate meeting in Copenhagen in December.
Africa has warned it will veto any deal that is not generous enough, and the 27-country European Union is trying to calculate a fair payment to break the deadlock.
Now we must break the impasse in the Copenhagen negotiations, EU Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas told reporters. We know climate change forces additional costs on developing countries.
Dimas team of experts estimates the developing world will face costs of around 100 billion euros a year by 2020 to cut emissions from industry and to help deal with droughts and crop failures worsened by climate change.
Taxes on global shipping, aviation and industry could help, leaving a gap of 22-55 billion euros to be filled from the public purse. The EU could contribute 2-15 billion euros of that, the Commission said.
But environmentalists said the figure was too low. The EU is trying to get away with leaving a tip rather than paying its share of the bill to protect the planets climate, Greenpeace campaigner Joris den Blanken said.
Dimas said he was trying to strike a delicate balance between the needs of the developing world and those of cash-strapped European countries.
Of course there are voices in the EU saying we should do more, but there are also voices saying this is too much money at a time of economic crisis, he said.
Swedish environment minister Andreas Carlgren, whose country hold the EUs rotating presidency, told Reuters he had no fears the funding pledge would be whittled down by other European leaders.
The Commission had previously indicated the EU might pay as much as 24 billion euros, but retracted the number after deciding the United States should carry a heavier financial burden to compensate for its relatively modest emissions cuts.
The EU also slashed billions of euros off its budget for paying for emissions cuts in poor countries after deciding local businesses should finance their own energy-saving measures because such investments can ultimately pay for themselves.
European ministers warned that Decembers landmark UN climate talks could fail, as the EU Commission urged rich nations Thursday to stump up tens of billions of euros to help the developing world combat global warming.
The Copenhagen deal is hanging in the balance, British Foreign Secretary David Miliband told reporters.
Its a real danger that the world will not come together in the way that is necessary to agree on an ambitious and comprehensive deal in December, warned Miliband, in Denmark to meet with his Danish, Finnish, French and Swedish counterparts on the issue.
The December 7-18 talks in Copenhagen, under the 192-nation UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), aim to craft a post-2012 pact for curbing the heat-trapping gases that drive perilous global warming.
French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner told AFP that Copenhagen would be judged as a success if there is the willingness from rich countries to help poorer ones deal with the effects of global warming.
It is the richest who must share most of the burden with developing countries, Kouchner said.
His comments came on the day that French President Nicolas Sarkozy announced plans to impose a new carbon tax next year on oil, gas and coal despite polls showing strong opposition among the public.