Representatives from almost 200 nations have begun arriving in the Peruvian capital, Lima, for UN climate talks that get underway on Monday.
Delegates will meet for 10 days to work on a new deal to limit rising greenhouse gas emissions, meant to be agreed at a summit in Paris in December next year.
Christiana Figueres, the executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, has described the talks as a “stepping stone” towards a universal treaty.
“Never before have the risks of climate change been so obvious and the impacts so visible,” she said in a statement ahead of the meeting.
“Never before have we seen such a desire at all levels of society to take climate action.
“Never before has society had all the smart policy and technology resources to curb greenhouse gas emissions and build resilience.”
Pledges in recent weeks by China, the United States and the European Union to limit emissions have helped brighten prospects for a new global deal, even though it is likely to be too weak to match UN calls for deep cuts to limit heatwaves, droughts and rising seas.
Representatives from Pacific Islands nations say they will use the Lima talks to hammer home their message about the threat that global warming poses for them.
Espen Ronneberg, the climate change adviser with the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Program, has arrived in Peru.
He told Radio Australia one of the key issues will be how new money pledged by the world’s major economies to help poor nations will be divided.
“We simply need to have a final agreement from everybody involved that around 25 per cent of the funds will be dedicated to adaptation work in the small islands and the least developed countries,” he said.
A Spanish pledge of 120 million euros ($175 million) to the Green Climate Fund has raised the total close to the $11.75 billion UN target before the meeting in Peru.
The GCF said that pledges now totalled $11.4 billion from 22 nations, just shy of the UN goal but well short of $17 billion demanded by developing nations for a first capitalisation.
“We call upon all countries who have not yet contributed to join in,” Hela Cheikhrouhou, executive director of the Seoul-based GCF, said in a statement.
Canada promised $305 million last week after a donors’ conference raised $10.9 billion in Berlin.
The United States has been the biggest single donor, with up to $3.5 billion, ahead of Japan on $1.7 billion.
Jan Kowalzig of aid and development charity Oxfam said rich nations now needed to do far more to keep a promise made in 2009 to raise financial flows, from both public and private sources, to $117 billion a year by 2020.
2014 ABC