The UN's Climate change agency welcomed recent proposals by the World Bank to fund and help poorer countries fight against Global Warming, but environmentalist groups criticised the credibility of the proposals.
The World Bank will manage 2 separate multi-million dollar funds, one of which will aid developing countries curb their emissions which contribute to climate change; the other will help countries protect themselves against flooding and storms which become increasingly intense as Global Warming develops. 40 developing and industrialized nations have agreed on the funding and believe it to be both a good idea and a positive step.
Green groups' distrust of the bank may stem from its previous lending of money to aid the development of fossil-fuel burning power plants - even recent projects in India have received funding from the World Bank. Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and Actionaid all believe that the bank's money will still end up paying for coal burning power plants, only with new, more efficient technology. A statement by the groups said: "Clean must be 'clean,' not 'slightly less dirty.'"
The bank obviously disagrees with this statement and believes that it has greater benefit to the environment because it shifts to larger, more efficient and cleaner construction of energy plants - as opposed to smaller, more polluting instalments. The difference in efficiency will mean the new plants will be more beneficial to the environment than if smaller plants were to continue to spring up.
Environmentalist groups will still be wondering why money from the World Bank isn't being used to push renewable and sustainable energy in developing countries. The argument seems to resemble that of the debate about Carbon Capture Technology which aims to keep fossil fuel burning factories and plants in operation by capturing carbon emissions and burying them in porous rocks. Green groups will feel that governments are simply stalling renewable energy to remain firmly in the environmentally unfriendly carbon age.
However, UN climate chief Yvo de Boer stressed his support for the Kyoto Protocol: "I think given the pace of at which coal-fired power plants are being built every delay means more sub-optimal plants."
The environmentalist groups also found issue with the form of the grant money, stating that the money would actually resemble loans which developing countries would then need to pay back with interest.
The World Bank reply: "It is highly inappropriate to issue loans for adaptation, given that rich countries are overwhelmingly responsible for climate change."
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This post was written by Ben Willis on June 9, 2008