Europe set to turn its back on developing countries and undermine global climate talks

Europe's leaders are on the brink of abdicating their responsibility to tackle today’s biggest challenge to humanity, says international agency Oxfam.

The lives and livelihoods of millions of poor people are at stake from worsening climate change. The promise of a progressive deal from Europe – one that would have boosted international climate talks now underway in Poland – is set to be lost. Europe instead could send those talks off the rails.

EU leaders meet tomorrow (Dec 11) to hammer out a Climate and Energy Package that Oxfam says has been so compromised that it risks sending exactly the wrong signals to international negotiators, developing countries, the public and business – unless an 11th hour rescue is made.

“The French have presided over a process that has pandered to industry scare-mongering and to the self-interest of too many member states – Poland, Italy and Germany particularly,” said head of Oxfam’s EU office, Elise Ford. “At this historic moment, Europe cannot afford to fail.”

“We’re staring at a collective failure of political will. International negotiators will be completely underwhelmed by Europe’s offering – especially developing countries that were counting on Europe moving first to set the bar high for a new global deal,” she said.

The likely outcome this week is that Europe will either pass a poor deal that will not lead to sufficient cuts in domestic emissions and raise enough money, or fail to agree a deal at all. Both options are very bad for poor countries and for the international talks, Oxfam says.

The promise of Europe being ambitious has all but disappeared across the three key components of its climate package: emission cuts; auctioning of emission permits; and earmarking auction proceeds to help developing countries adapt and mitigate.

The EU is set to wriggle out of making sufficient cuts to its domestic emissions and instead rely too heavily on off-setting, by trading emission permits overseas. Heavy industry has successfully lobbied to be exempt from having to buy permits at auction – a process that sits at the heart of Europe’s mitigation strategy. Meanwhile, earmarking some of those auction revenues to help poorer countries adapt seems to have disappeared entirely, disregarding an earlier decision by the European Parliament to give 50% of annual revenues as mandatory to developing countries.

“Auctioning permits is one of the main ways that the EU could have raised enough money to help poor countries adapt to climate change and pursue low-carbon development. Instead, gifting permits to big business not only evades the responsibility for them creating emissions but takes money directly from the hands of poor people who have done least to create the problem,” Ford said. “Europe is about to shred the ‘polluter pays’ principle.”

“Member states are about to send a signal to business that there will be no political framework in Europe to seriously support new green investment strategies. The signal to Europe’s public is ‘we’re not listening’ and to poor people in developing countries it is ‘helping you comes second to helping our dirty industries’,” she said. “Europe’s signal to international negotiations now underway in Poznan, meanwhile, could be even more immediately damaging.”

Europe must agree to cut its domestic emissions by at least 30% below 1990 levels by 2020, in line with scientific findings to try to keep the world below catastrophic 2°C warming. It must agree to 100% auctioning of carbon permits, and earmark at least 50% of those revenues from its richest members to go to developing countries.

“If Europe is to be an international leader on climate change, then this is the bare minimum we need to see – or else the global negotiations are in far deeper trouble than is already feared,” Ford said. “The EU cannot just show internal solidarity, external solidarity is just as important. Developing countries need immediate funding to fight climate change.”