Panel to world powers: Pay the price of global warming

Flooding in Mozambique left tens of thousands homeless

March 15, 2000
Web posted at: 3:14 p.m. EST (2014 GMT)

By Environmental News Network staff

Industrialized nations should set up a compensation fund for developing nations that suffer natural disasters linked to global warming, a panel of environmentalists said Monday at a workshop focused on climate change.

"You cannot link one specific disaster to climate change," said Jennifer Morgan, director of the World Wildlife Fund's Climate Campaign. "But we will see more extreme weather events in a warmer world."

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The World Wildlife Fund bases its argument on data compiled by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and studies conducted by Tom Karl, a climate scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

According to the panel, developing nations are responsible for only one-third of global emissions of carbon dioxide, the most prominent greenhouse gas. Yet, these countries are likely to suffer the most severe impacts of climate change.

One impact, according to Karl, is more extreme weather events.

The environmentalists made their case at an intergovernmental workshop in Bonn, Germany, organized to set the operating rules of the Kyoto Protocol, an international treaty to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases.

None of the industrialized nations responsible for nearly two-thirds of global carbon dioxide emissions has ratified the protocol, nor has any enacted measures to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases.

Developing countries like Mozambique are likely to suffer most severely from climate change

"Governments have to accept that if they are not prepared to take domestic measures to reduce their carbon dioxide emissions, they will have to pay the price," said Morgan.

At this stage, the concept of a compensation fund is more a warning signal than a policy proposal. "If they (industrialized nations) start reducing emissions now, then such a fund hopefully will not need to occur, or be much smaller," said Morgan.

The fund would be similar to the compensation some industrialized nations already give to their own citizens for severe weather events. During last year's drought in Texas, for example, farmers received emergency relief funds from the Clinton administration.

Who would pay into such a fund? Morgan hopes the rule would follow the "polluter pays" argument.

"If the U.S. tobacco industry can be held responsible for smoking-related deaths and illnesses and ordered to pay very hefty fines, wealthy countries must be held responsible in some way for the contribution that their carbon pollution is almost certainly making to recent droughts and floods," said Morgan.

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