Comments on: Adaptation assistance – with a hefty price tag

By: erinamelia

erinamelia — Wed, 21 May 2008 12:50:41 +0000

Thanks for your support, Jonathan. For the UK I’d recommend writing to the following people:

Gordon Brown, Prime Minister
http://www.pm.gov.uk/output/Page821.asp

Alastair Darling MP, Chancellor of the Exchequer (it’s his department that made the decision)
darlinga@parliament.uk

Hilary Benn MP, Head of Defra/Environment Minister
bennh@parliament.uk

Douglas Alexander MP, Head of Dfid/Int’l Development Minister
ALEXANDERD@parliament.uk

It’s also very much worth contacting the international development minister in Australia (and possibly the treasury?) to make sure that their adaptation assistance is in the form of grants, not loans. It’s going to be quite a big agenda item at the G8.

Juan, I’d love to have more of a conversation with you about this as it’s an issue I’ve had my eye on for some time. I’ll drop you a line when I’ve got a bit more time.

By: Juan

Juan — Sun, 18 May 2008 16:10:50 +0000

My dear Erin,
thanks for blogging on this. I have been following this topic for a few months, and it’s worst that it sounds. The hypocrisy has reached unprecedented levels, particularly from the UK, Japan, and the US. The idea for the fund was originally conceived by Japan, so that they can have something to show at the G8. the UK jumped on board, and the US… well, its the US… Unfortunately, other donor countries have accepted the imposition of the ETF, and although are not happy about, have agreed to the ball roll. Moving the UK, US, and Japan might seem impossible, and moving the World Bank is difficult as well, but at least other progressive countries should speak up. Consultations have been held all over the world, and the opinion of NGOs, CBOs, and other members of civil society has been against these funds, but the creation of the fund goes on BAU. Unfortunately, when it comes to “consultation”, the World Bank concept so far is to have a talk show where they allow civil society to vent and then respond to their questions stating that they will do something about it and with great politeness that the creation of the ETS will carry on.
The creation of the Fund is wrong from all perspectives. It even goes against the creation of the World Bank bastard child, the Global Environmental Facility that is supposed “to do the work” when it comes to climate change in developing countries.
I wish i could expand more, but internet is limited. My regards from Mozambique to you.

By: Jonathan Moylan

Jonathan Moylan — Sun, 18 May 2008 05:15:03 +0000

Hi erinamelia,

That’s completely fucked. Do you know which Minister in the UK would be the best to contact about this?

As an aside, Australia is doing very little to either mitigate or help the majority world adapt to climate change, even though we are the #1 coal exporter and my city is home to the world’s biggest coal export port. Our last budget included $140 million for “clean” coal, $0 for renewables, and $20 billion over a few years to expand our coal export ports, industrial rail and to build roads.

So Australia has no high horse to preach from, but as a human creature I still want to write to the people who are trying to govern the country you live in. I hope some mad activism comes out of this. Maybe we could lend politicians their salaries, or better still, lend them our fines and taxes.