The Struggle To Adapt

By: Hilary Chiew on January 8th, 2009

Much of the US$172 million of the LDC Fund launched in 2001 remains pledged in name only. To date, only one out of the 38 projects submitted thus far have been approved. Bhutan, the country that secured the only approved project, said that only three of the nine priority areas it identified as urgent and immediate is funded.

For Mazoe Gondme, the season of Christmas is different these days.

When she was a young woman, she sowed maize before Christmas Day and waited for the rain to help her crop germinate.

As a married woman, who now shoulders the task of ensuring her family has sufficient food, the festive season no longer serves as Gondme’s guide.

Rainfall patterns in Riumphi, located in northern Malawi, have gone awry. This has led to crop failures in the last few years. Gondme has had to turn to irrigation to grow the staple grain.

But flooding her small plot of land is back-breaking and takes up a huge chunk of Gondme’s precious time.

Her predicament is not isolated. More and more farmers in developing countries are experiencing drought due to climate change.

Gondme was at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) summit in Poznan, where 192 nations spent two weeks negotiating a post-2012 plan to address global warming, and to appeal for funding to adapt to an increasingly arid environment.

Under the UNFCCC treaty, industrialised nations (called the Annex I countries), which are signatories to the Kyoto Protocol, are obligated to reduce their emissions by 5 per cent from the 1990 levels between this year and 2012.

At the last meeting in Bali, parties to the Convention agreed to work towards a new accord in time for their meeting in Copenhagen, slated for the end of 2009. The meeting in Poznan is the half-way point in a two-year negotiation process.

But Gondme, 58, is among the many who are not getting the help, which had been promised by rich nations that are supposed to finance the Least Developed Countries (LDC) Fund.

To obtain funding for adaptation projects, individual countries have to develop their National Adaptation Programme of Actions (NAPAs) — a process that many find to be time-consuming, overly bureaucratic, and a drain on the limited funding available.

This, according to poor nations, contradicts the principle that the fund support’s the implementation of “urgent and immediate” activities identified in the NAPA.

Much of the US$172 million of the LDC Fund launched in 2001 remains pledged in name only. To date, only one out of the 38 projects submitted thus far have been approved. To finance all the projects will cost about US$1.6 billion.

Bhutan, the country that secured the only approved project, said that only three of the nine priority areas identified as urgent and immediate in their NAPA are funded. Implementation started a few months ago but the funding is not enough for the country’s needs.

Critics have said the fund is woefully inadequate. Development NGO Oxfam International has estimated that US $5 billion is required per year to assist the increasing numbers of countries that are affected by the effects of climate change.

Countries are calling for a simplified mechanism to disperse the fund, and for direct access through a national body, but this is opposed by developed nations, which are citing fears of corruption.

Negotiators from the G77, and the Association of Small Island States and Least Developed Countries, reminded delegates from developed countries that money for adaptation is at the core of moral and ethical issues.

Bangladesh chief delegate Mohammad Reazuddin, frustrated by mere talk and the lack of action, said: “Why are we [even] discussing about effectiveness of adaptation projects when not a project has yet to be implemented? What can we do with people who lose their land due to sea level rise? We need to place people at the centre of the discussion.”

The director of the Department of Environment noted that money for adaptation should come from industrialised nations according to the polluters-pay principle through overseas development assistance, to which rich countries had pledged 0.7 per cent of their respective GDPs (gross domestic product) since the Rio Summit in 1992.

“That was a gentleman’s agreement but they failed to deliver,” Reazuddin said. “[Maybe] we need to go from voluntary to mandatory pay out. Adaptation cannot wait so we need auto-generation from the Adaptation Fund.”

Launched at Bali, the Adaptation Fund was made operational at the end of the Poznan meeting but countries could not reach an agreement on additional funding sources.

Maldives delegate Amjad Abdullah said that while some countries have fared better in facing climate change, it is a question of survival for the island states of the Indian Ocean: “Other countries have some parts that are vulnerable — in my country, everywhere is vulnerable.”

He said developing nations have the adaptive capacity and all they need is the fund. But, so far, most of the payment had gone to consultants from the West.

“They come for 10 days, spend few hours in my office and collect some reports,” said Abdullah. “Then we keep exchanging emails … this is the way we play the game. There is a commitment with this Convention. We are not asking for a donation.”

Philippine negotiator Bernadittas Muller echoed Abdullah’s sentiment. “Funding must be made flexible and not loaded with conditions,” she said. “It takes very little to start and that little is political will.” Muller added that Philippines had developed an early warning system of climate-link disasters based on local expertise, and it didn’t cost it much.

Extra ammunition to delegates from poor countries was provided by the US$ 4 trillion of bail-out packages stacked up to save the dire straits that the financial markets of the United States and several European countries find themselves in. It revealed the hypocrisy of Annex I nations for not living up to their funding promises in the negotiation halls as well as the many side events and press conferences through out the 12-day conference.

Delegates said the pledged amount of US$172 million is “a measly sum” and not even half of the Christmas bonus of the CEO of a bank that was recently bailed out in the United States.

Salameel Huq, who heads the Climate Change Group of the International Institute for Environment and Development said funding is not from ordinary taxpayers of developed countries but from the polluters in those countries — like the 2 per cent levy on transactions to offset investments under the UNFCCC’s Clean Development Mechanism.

CDM enables polluting industries in Annex I countries to meet their emission reduction target by purchasing carbon credits from avoided releases in projects in developing countries.

Salameel pointed out that negotiators must mentally shift from simply negotiating for the present citizens to the future population. “Our constituency is our children and grandchildren,” he said, referring to the fact that the younger generations would be the hardest hit by climate change.