EU offers €15 billion in climate aid

BRUSSELS — The European Union proposed Thursday to offer up to €15 billion ($21.8 billion) a year in aid to poor developing countries to persuade them to sign a new global climate change agreement.

However, development and environmental campaigners blasted the offer as insufficient because it assumes that poorer nations will bear most of the costs of reducing their greenhouse gas emissions.

EU Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas said the promised funding was Europe’s “first meaningful proposal” to urge faster progress toward a new United Nations global climate pact at Copenhagen in December.

Europe now wants to put the pressure on other major polluters such as the United States and China to get them to either promise emission cuts or pledge funding toward poorer nations.

The EU “will not and cannot bankroll the negotiations alone,” Dimas said.

Five EU foreign ministers from Britain, France, Denmark, Sweden and Finland said Thursday that they would press the U.S., China, Brazil, India and Russia to do more to tackle climate change in a series of EU meetings in coming weeks.

“Time is now short and the need is urgent,” British Foreign Minister David Miliband said at Copenhagen University. His Danish counterpart, Per Stig Moeller, said the EU “must also do all it can to engage key players.”

The prime ministers of Sweden and Denmark, meanwhile, were traveling to South Africa and India to discuss a new climate change treaty.

The EU funding was expected by poor countries and by aid and environment groups which argue that centuries of economic growth in Europe and North America are largely to blame for the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, and that those countries should provide billions in compensation and aid to developing nations that will suffer from a warming climate.

But environmental campaigners criticized that as too little.

The environmental group WWF said the EU was assuming that developing countries would pay out of their own pockets for the kind of energy efficiency reductions that richer nations haven’t managed.

Greenpeace said EU governments had watered down earlier plans to give up to €24 billion ($35 billion) a year by 2020 and that the EU was now “trying to get away with leaving a tip rather than paying its share of the bill to protect the planet’s climate.”

Oxfam said the EU was urging countries to take climate change funding from money earmarked to increase overseas aid.

William Chadza of Malawi’s Centre for Environmental Policy and Advocacy said the EU would need to offer far more than €50 billion to cope with global warming by creating low-carbon economies.

Some booming emerging nations — such as China — say they should not have to cut emissions sharply because they need the chance to grow their industries.

Europe says only the very poorest nations should avoid preparing low-carbon growth plans by 2011 to set out how they plan to restrict greenhouse gas emissions in coming decades.

The EU plan, if agreed to by all 27 EU nations, says developing countries will face annual costs of some €100 billion ($146 billion) a year by 2020 if they are to meet climate change commitments.

The European Commission said governments worldwide will likely have to contribute some €22 billion to €50 billion a year and that the European Union’s share of that would be €2 billion to €15 billion by 2020.

Between 20 and 40 percent of the money needed would come from developing nations — either from governments or private projects to raise cash. Up to €38 million — or 40 percent — could come from global carbon trading. The rest would come from rich nations.

The EU plans to use around half of the money it raises from auctioning pollution permits as part of a cap-and-trade program to help tackle climate change at home and abroad. That program will expand to cover most industrial sites and other polluters, including airlines, by 2020.

The bloc also suggests that global aviation and maritime transport could provide financing with some sort of international cap-and-trade program.

The EU is promising to start funding developing nations as soon as a climate change pact is reached in December. It says it will lay out between €500 million to €2.1 billion a year from 2010 to 2012. That could increase to €900 million to €3.9 billion in 2013.

The European Union is seeking for a deal that will limit the increase in global warming by 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) Fahrenheit?). It is promising to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by a fifth below 1990 levels by 2020 — and says it will increase that reduction to 30 percent if other major polluters do the same.

This week, Japan pledged to cut emissions by 25 percent from 1990 levels. The U.S. is considering a far lower cut — 17 percent from 2005 levels or about 3.5 percent from 1990.

Dimas, the EU environment commissioner, refused to criticize the U.S. effort, saying President Barack Obama’s administration was “fully committed” to fighting climate change and that the final U.S. target reduction has not yet been decided.

A panel of U.N. scientists has recommended that developed countries make cuts of between 25 percent and 40 percent by 2020 to avoid a catastrophic rise in sea levels, harsher storms and droughts and climate disruptions.

Associated Press writers Jan Olsen in Copenhagen and Constant Brand in Brussels contributed to this story.