Victoria's Green Matters - 23rd July 2015

Deal With IT's Secretary Victoria Nicholls writes a regular column in the East Kent Mercury:

Europe is getting tough on climate change. In the run-up to the climate talks in Paris in December, the EU’s commissioner for climate action is urging heads of governments around the world to encourage their ministers to come up with plans for a deal on limiting the effects of climate change.

In December, governments will meet in the French capital at a UN summit to make a new global agreement to limit carbon emissions which will come into force when the present one ends in 2020. This is seen as the last chance for the world to take action on scientific advice regarding the necessity to curb carbon emissions if we are to have any chance of avoiding dangerous climate change.

Developing countries are a crucial part of these negotiations. Poor nations do not have the finances to put in place the actions to limit carbon emissions and to deal with the effects of a changing climate. ‘Climate finance’ has been promised by the EU and other countries to the tune of £65 billion a year by 2020 to developing nations and the talks are expected to agree a system for providing finance well beyond then.

Developing nations, of course, are the ones at the ‘coal face’ when it comes to suffering from the droughts, floods and heatwaves that are the result of a warming world and they need to protect what infrastructure they have. Sufficient financial aid will encourage them to go ahead toward a low carbon world.