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Developing nations’ demands acknowledged in declaration

L’Aquila, Italy: The climate change declaration contains commitments on funding and technology development and transfer that are significant from the standpoint of the developing countries.

While committing themselves to doubling public sector investments in research and development of climate-friendly technologies, the leaders of the major economies undertook to “remove barriers, establish incentives, enhance capacity-building, and implement appropriate measures to aggressively accelerate deployment and transfer of key existing and new low-carbon technologies.”

The other long-standing demand of the developing countries to provide a funding arrangement to enable them to adapt themselves to the consequences of climate change and move to climate-friendly technologies was also acknowledged in the declaration.

The leaders committed themselves to scaling up the resources needed for mitigation and adaptation “urgently and substantially” from public and private sources. One proposal at the summit was the Green Fund proposed by Mexico which would involve assessed contributions from different countries based on several criteria including historic responsibility, overall emissions, per capita emissions, overall GDP and per capita GDP.

The other was the proposal of British Prime Minister Gordon Brown to raise £ 100 billion mainly from market sources, including carbon markets. There would be limited public funding under this proposal for the least developed countries and island economies.