Least Developed Countries demand climate finance figures from rich nations

The world’s least developed countries have called upon the industrialized nations to provide detailed information about the finance they are willing to provide to help the vulnerable adapt to climate change.

Speaking at the end of international negotiations under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the chair of the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) Group, Prakash Mathema, said greater financial transparency was needed to implement action to tackle climate change.

The LDC Group requests each industrialized country to provide information on the levels of finance they have provided in 2013 and how much they will provide in future years.

The group requests this information to include precise allocations for adaptation specifically, along with a breakdown of how much finance is for the LDCs.

The LDCs request that the richer nations provide this information at COP19, the 19^th Conference of Parties to the UNFCCC, which takes place in Warsaw at the end of the year.

“Delayed climate action and lack of ambition to close the mitigation gap will cost more tomorrow than today. We need to move to a sustainable climate smart pathway where life is possible for all and for generations to come”, stated Prakash.

The LDCs, with their weak adaptive capacity and their extreme vulnerability to the adverse impacts of climate change, have already witnessed many catastrophic climate disasters and these events are going to be more frequent, intense and unpredictable.

The level of concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has reached 400 parts per million, the highest level for some three million years. This has been described as alarming.

The LDCs Group Chair lamented the failure of parties to launch the negotiations under the UNFCCC’s Subsidiary Body for Implementation at the UN negotiations which ended in Bonn on Friday.

“This is of grave concern to us as issues of implementation are key for the LDCs. We expect this not to happen again at COP19 in Warsaw later this year. Communities around the world have high expectations regarding this process and hope that we, as climate ambassadors, will take some bold decisions very soon to protect humanity from the adverse impacts of climate change. To implement such decisions, financial support is key. We need to act now and we need to act together”, noted Prakash.