Times of India , Wednesday, April 02, 2008

Correspondent : Staff Reporter

BANGKOK: Developing countries at a UN conference today said they won't sign a global warming pact unless industrialised nations guarantee them billions of dollars needed to adapt to the impact of climate change. Island nations in the Caribbean and South Pacific recounted how they are being hit by worsening floods, rising seas and cyclones linked to climate change and don't have the money to build sea walls or relocate threatened villagers. "Adaptation is critical to our very survival," said Selwin Hart, a delegate from Barbados who was speaking for the Alliance of Small Island States. "If a deal on adaptation is not part of this agreement, we have no incentive to be part of it." Rich countries insist they are willing to help but disagree over how to provide assistance, whether it should be voluntary aid favoured by the United States or a European proposal to use the trading of pollution permits to generate funds. "Part of the reason for the time lag on adaptation is that the global community has focused almost solely on mitigation," said J. Warren Evans, the World Bank's director of the environment department. "Almost all of the money in the 1990s was for mitigation." The weeklong conference of representatives from 163 countries launched a 21-month process yesterday aimed at concluding a new climate change agreement to replace the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012, to rein in carbon dioxide and other "greenhouse" gases blamed for the rise in world temperatures.

SOURCE : Times of India, Wednesday, 02 April 2008