WARSAW, November 24, 2:03 /ITAR-TASS/. The participants in the 19th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change have approved a new procedure of compensation for the damage and losses from climate change on Saturday.
One of the final documents adopted at the conference said that the Warsaw international mechanism was created to indemnify the damage and losses caused by gradually coming aftermath of climate change as well as emergency situations in the countries under development, which are particularly vulnerable due to unfavourable climate change. According to this decision an executive committee will be formed that should represent highly industrialized countries and countries under development on the basis of equity.
During the debates on a new committee highly industrialized countries, particularly the United States called for this mechanism to work for prevention, combating the negative climate change and acting in the conditions of adaptation to it. Meanwhile, the countries under development insisted on its climate rehabilitation functions.
Speaking on behalf of the most underdeveloped countries, an official from Nepal, a country in the Himalayas in South Asia, stated that “the mechanism cannot be fulfilled as ordinary adaptation.” “The compensation of damage and losses and adaptation are different things,” he stated.
A delegate from Bolivia, South America, stated that “many losses are inevitable and we cannot adapt to some things.” “All countries should protect the land, but those, who are responsible for harmful aftermath of climate change, should assume more liabilities for funding,” he said.
Despite the protest of the countries under development, the specific changes were not included in the document, but the negotiating parties fix an option in it to revise the Warsaw international mechanism, including its structure, mandate and efficiency at the 22nd World Climate Change Conference in 2016.
The participants in the conference did not set in the document a concrete sum of funding that the developed countries should allocate for the protection of the climate up to 2020. The countries under development insisted that the conference should agree on allocating 70 billion dollars for the period from 2013 until 2016, but they had to give up these requirements, showing the spirit of compromise and flexibility.
Taking into account that the developed countries have earlier agreed to increase the level of funding the climate-related policy to 100 billion dollars annually by 2020, the participants in the conference called for working more intensively to attain this goal, attracting the monetary funds including from private resources. The countries were also recommended to prepare the materials on their national strategy to increase the funding for environment protection from 2014 through 2020. In particular, the World Climate Change Conference expects the information about expected levels of funding in the sphere of climate, policy, programmes and priorities, actions and the plans to raise additional financial resources.
The 19th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change began in Warsaw, Poland’s capital, on November 11 and was to end on Friday evening. However, the talks were prolonged.