Ireland has managed to deliver €107 million in aid over the past three years to support countries experiencing the worst impacts of climate change, particularly in Africa, according to Minister for the Environment Phil Hogan.
Addressing a plenary session of the UN’s 18th climate change conference in Doha, Mr Hogan told delegates from 194 countries that Ireland “aspires to maintaining climate finance at current levels . . . despite challenging financial circumstances”.
During Ireland’s forthcoming EU presidency of the EU, the Minister said he would be “engage constructively” in discussions with other member states on “scaling up the mobilisation of climate finance” to reach the target of $100 billion a year in 2020.
Financial transactions tax
His speech made no reference to the fact that Ireland has joined Britain in opposing an EU-wide tax on financial transactions, which proponents such as France and the Institute for Policy Studies say could raise up to $50 billion a year.
A spokesman for Mr Hogan, who has been in Doha since last Friday, said that apart from taking part in the negotiations, he had been meeting EU ministers to seek their support for an “ambitious environmental agenda” under the Irish presidency.
The spokesman said progress was also being made nationally “in delivering on the programme for the development of national climate policy and legislation published in early 2013” and details of additional initiatives would be announced “in the coming weeks”.
In his three-minute speech, Mr Hogan said everyone at the Doha conference recognised “the need to take action urgently if we are to get back on a pathway to meet the goal of keeping the global temperature increase below 2 degrees”.
Increasing emissions
Instead of declining, greenhouse gas emissions were increasing more rapidly.
“Even if the most ambitious level of pledges and commitments now on the table were implemented by all countries, we will fall well short of where we need to be by 2020.”
Oisín Coghlan, director of Friends of the Earth Ireland, said: “Fine words at far-away conferences are easy. The real test for the Minister will be the publication of the draft climate change Bill, due before Christmas”, which would not be met.
On climate finance, Mr Coghlan said the Minister was “playing a three-card trick on climate finance” because all the money allocated this year had come from the “already declining overseas aid budget”, rather than from his department’s environment fund.
