Rich countries must agree to provide money 'immediately' to poor nations to help them to adapt to global warning, the British Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling said today (6 November) as finance ministers from the world’s wealthiest countries gathered for a crucial meeting.

 

Mr Darling said climate finance would be a 'vitally important' issue on the agenda for the meeting of ministers from the G20 group of nations in St Andrews in Scotland that takes place on 6 and 7 November.

 

Ministers for 19 countries plus the European Union are meeting exactly a week after EU leaders agreed that climate change would need €100bn euros ($148bn; £90bn) as the total global figure required per year by 2020.

'We must begin to provide, and then eventually scale up, that finance immediately,' Mr Darling, who chairs the meeting, wrote in an opinion piece in The Independent. He said that the EU was prepared to pay its 'fair share', while the UK would make €100bn (£900m) a year available as part of EU funding. 'We must convince other major economies to put substantial funding on the table,' he wrote.

 

The Chancellor conceded that there were 'substantial barriers' to a global deal on climate finance, particularly the lack of a global architecture to distribute and monitor financing on this scale.

 

He said he wanted the new fund to focus on green technology, be accountable and transparent, and include private sector finance. 'The challenges are daunting, but not without precedent,' he said referring to the creation of the Bretton Woods financial architecture after World War II. 'Then, as now, governments needed vision,' he wrote. 'This weekend, once again, countries must come together to protect the common good.'

 

An agreement on climate finance by ministers from countries representing almost 90% of the world economy would add to the momentum ahead of the summit of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) in Singapore that takes place on 1-15 November and which is dominated by emerging and developing economies.