UPDATE: Together we’ve asked Australia to put their money where their mouth is, what’s their response?

Posted on 07. Oct, 2009 by Cara Bevington in Australia

Firstly, I want to send a HUGE thank you to everyone who has thus far supported our rallying call asking Prime Minister Rudd to step up to his rhetoric of climate leadership and take action on climate finance.

In the past week, more than 1000 Australians have sent an email to Rudd (cc-ing relevant Ministers Swan and Wong) letting them know we are tracking their moves throughout all the international climate talks happening this year, and we want to hear the Australian government break their silence on climate finance.

It’s not too late to send off yours if you haven’t already, in fact, the timing couldn’t be better, we need sustained pressure!

Right now in Bangkok, the UN climate negotiations are moving at a snail’s pace. Or in the word’s of our lead negotiator Louise Hand, they are like “a walk in the park, and we need to pick it up to a sprint.”

One of the issues that will get us on track to the sprint, is significant movement on climate finance from wealthy developed countries (read: how much will they contribute, where will it come from and who will get it?)

I’ve talked about why climate finance is so critical in past blogs, so here’s just a quick look at the headline points:

Climate finance is a cross cutting issue in the negotiations. Pick an aspect of climate change, and developing countries need cash to deal with it. Adapting to the impacts they are already facing, continuing to develop on a low carbon economy, meeting emission reduction targets, implementing new technologies, and on and on and on.

Developed countries are pushing developing countries to make commitments to reduce their emissions from business as usual projections. Developing countries are very weary of making commitments until they are clear about the level of support they will receive to do so from the wealthy countries who have overwhelmingly contributed to climate change (fair enough I say!)

That’s not to suggest that developing countries aren’t taking action. Indonesia (the world’s third largest emitter) recently announced a national climate change action plan ‘that will reduce their emissions by 26 per cent by 2020 from BAU (Business As Usual).’ Further to that, they have indicated that they will reduce emissions by as much as 41% if a global financing plan is rolled out.

Your messages on finance have been delivered to the halls of Canberra, and they are also being heard by the negotiators here in Bangkok.

Late last week, myself and couple of my fellow Australian NGO-ers (who are totally down pat on this finance issue) met with the Australian delegation’s two lead negotiators on finance, a woman from the Department of Climate Change, Jane, and a woman from AusAid, Deb.

The delegates assured us that the issue of climate finance is “being thought about deeply and addressed at the highest level”, with the Department of Climate Change, the Prime Minister’s Office and Treasury all working on it.

They said were scoping out a number of the proposals that other countries had put forward, and looking to draw out any elements of each of the proposals that they thought were useful, and identify which elements had broad support from other countries. In negotiating language, they were looking hard for areas of convergence and divergence.

The day after this meeting, both Australia and the USA submitted new pieces of text about finance to the chair of the Long Term Co-operative Action working group. (Check out USA tracker Ben’s blog for the Americana perspective).

Australia put forward a proposal which they’ve called a “Facilitative platform” (for the eager beans following the talks from home, you can find it under sub-section 6, paragraph 19, option 10). They got a chance to speak to this proposal earlier this week. While they referred to the need for financing to be “scaled up” and recognized that significant amounts would be needed in the short term for adaptation projects – their text didn’t include a mention on the scale of finance or where it would come from. Rather, just how money could be spent.

I think the Papua New Guinea negotiator summed it up nicely, he thanked the Australian delegation for their constructive start, but questioned why there was no focus on how to mobilize capital, when there was so much focus on how it could be spent? He questioned: does the Australian proposal assume that money does in fact grow on trees?

At the moment, Australia is focused on the interior decoration for a house that is yet to be built, indeed where the block of land is not even yet secured. They’ve jumped to the operationalisation end and skipped right over the essential parts of climate finance which are really at the crux of these negotiations.

The negotiating team here in Bangkok can’t make an announcement on climate finance until they are given the go ahead from Kevin Rudd, right now it seems that Rudd is waiting for the perfect moment to make this announcement. With just over 60 days to go to Copenhagen, and only 3 days left of the negotiations here in Bangkok the perfect moment is now!

Our government has heard Australians speak: we want to see our leaders take strong action on climate change. Australia has proven to be a real broker in other areas of the negotiations. Right now there is a real need for the talks to get an injection of momentum, and a finance announcement from Australia that puts a figure on the table, and some suggested sources, a long with a commitment not to dip into the already stretched and inadequate aid budget could bring the stroll to a fast walk.

When we hear daily from countries about the fact we are negotiating the survival of their island homes, their famers livelihoods, their children’s right to live on the land their parents have always called home it is clear that Australia must step up to their strong climate rhetoric, and put their money where their mouth is.

Send your letter now!

For everyone who has already taken action, THANK YOU, we will be asking you to take your message to the streets soon! A letter to your local paper, call take back radio, send some Monopoly money to the PM - we need to make as much noise as possible on this issue! Stayed tuned.