Paris climate talks should not put figure on finance, says World Bank vice-president

(guardian-, 7 Oct 2015) Rachel Kyte says governments at the 2009 summit agreed funding for developing countries by ‘picking a $100bn figure out of the air’.

The Paris conference on climate change should not set a target for future financial assistance to developing countries, according to the World Bank’ s top official on climate change.

The question of how rich countries should provide money to poor countries to help them cut greenhouse gases and cope with the effects of global warming will be crucial to success at Paris , and the World Bank’s intervention is likely to be controversial in some quarters.

At the last landmark climate conference, in Copenhagen in 2009, rich countries agreed that $100bn a year should flow to the poor world in “climate finance” by 2020, a figure still to be met . Most developing countries regard this as totemic issue, and it is likely to prove the make-or-break condition of the Paris meeting in December, where governments are hoping to forge a new global agreement for the decade beyond 2020.

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guardian-, 7 Oct 2015: Paris climate talks should not put figure on finance, says World Bank vice-president