BRUSSELS: European environment ministers met on Monday to discuss how to raise billions of dollars needed to help poor countries prepare for global warming and to coax them into a global deal to tackle the problem.
But cracks started to emerge between the European Union's 27 nations on how to deal with the burden of finance.
Success at global talks in December in Copenhagen to find a successor to the Kyoto protocol will largely hinge on whether developing nations can be persuaded to tackle a problem they say has been caused by industrialized nations.
"We definitely want to move the European position further on," said Martin Bursik, environment minister for the Czech Republic, which holds the EU's rotating presidency.
"We are offering two kinds of financial mechanism based on which the developed countries will share responsibility of financing the mitigation and adaptation measures in the developing countries."
Europe and the United States are seen as the main donors. The latest version of a document detailing the EU's stance in global talks estimates that net global incremental investment in fighting climate change needs to increase to around 175 billion euros ($220.4 billion) by 2020.
EU sources say about 100 billion euros of that will need to be spent in developing countries.
Some EU countries, including Italy, are pushing to have the numbers dropped from the EU's negotiating position, documents show. Others, including Germany, feel they are necessary.
Greenpeace campaigner Joris den Blanken warned: "This could again paralyse U.N. climate negotiations. Last year, it became clear negotiations didn't move forward because the EU hadn't done its homework on financial support."
Two funding routes will be considered on Monday: a carbon market based mechanism with pollution permits being auctioned to raise funds, or a mechanism whereby funds are levied according to a country's gross domestic product and emissions.
Coal-powered economies like Poland will object to any attempt to link the level of contributions to the level of greenhouse gas emissions, a Polish diplomat said.
Greenpeace said industrialized countries were responsible for 64 percent of climate change due to emissions during the nineteenth century industrial revolution and should pay up.
It called on the EU to contribute around 35 billion euros a year by 2020.
Bursik said nothing could be certain without knowing the position of the United States.
"We are still waiting on the United States, that they provide us the mid term targets and that they will adopt the cap and trade system and talk about their money," he said.
