SWEDEN GIVES MILLIONS OF US DOLLARS FOR ADAPTATION TO CLIMATE CHANGE. WILL IT BE ENOUGH?

Yesterday at the Climate summit in Poznan, the Swedish government announced that it will provide USD 500 million to help developing countries to prepare, plan for and cope with the effects of climate change. However, while the Swedish contributions are significant, they are still insufficient to meet the adaptation needs of developing countries.

This contribution, combined with earlier pledges to the World Bank and European Union, confirms the Swedish commitment to support developing countries in their efforts to address climate change and its impacts.

However, while the Swedish contributions are significant, they are still insufficient to meet the adaptation needs of developing countries. Independent studies published last year by the World Bank, Oxfam, the UN Development Programme and the UN Climate Change Secretariat show that the investment needed for adaptation in developing countries lies between USD 10-100 billion dollars per year.

“While the announcement by Sweden is very welcome, it is clear that there will still be a significant shortfall in funding for adaptation. Developing countries should not have to rely on voluntary contributions from a few rich countries to be able to address a problem for which they are not responsible”, says Richard Klein, climate policy analyst at the Stockholm Environment Institute, “Developing countries are becoming impatient, and increasingly see this as an issue of justice and human rights. They wonder, after all, why hundreds of billions of dollars can be found to save a few banks and yet a fraction of this amount is not available to save the many lives at risk from climate change.”

One way of raising the necessary amounts of funding for adaptation is by auctioning emission rights to industry, and using part of the proceeds to support adaptation in developing countries. Norway has submitted a proposal to the international climate negotiations to this effect, and this approach is already being put to the test in Germany.

Klein says, “It is smart to use the carbon market to raise funds for adaptation, because it can create new and additional funds rather than diverting money from other priorities. It would also apply the ‘polluter-pays-principle’, which is widely accepted in other environmental policy fields.”

ENDS

Notes for Editors

Sweden has previously pledged:

• SEK 600 million to the Climate Investment Funds of the World Bank, and
• EUR 5.5 million to the Global Climate Change Alliance of the European Union (the only European country to contribute so far)

The need to adapt to climate change has arisen largely because rich countries like Sweden have relied heavily on fossil fuels to fuel their development. Developing countries have had a negligible contribution to the climate problem. For example, all of Africa is responsible for less than 3% of global CO2 emissions to date, while Sweden alone has contributed 0.37%. The United States are responsible for almost 29% of global emissions to date.

For more information and analysis on financing adaptation to climate change, please consult the attached policy brief.

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