Climate change campaigners today expressed dissapointment at the lack of agreement on climate finance amongst G20 leaders meeting in Scotland yesterday.
The G20 fell short of reaching an agreement on funding for tackling climate change, a month before key UN talks, but pledged support on Saturday to maintain stimulus measures for a still "uneven" global economy.
British charity Oxfam's senior policy adviser Max Lawson said: "The G20 has once again failed to live up to its rhetoric on climate change.
"As the clock ticks towards Copenhagen, the hundreds of millions of people around the world who are already suffering as a result of climate change cannot afford to wait any longer for a deal."
Richard Dixon, director of WWF Scotland, said the failure to reach agreement on funding was a "major disappointment."
"We wanted to see solid proposals on how the money would be raised, managed and distributed and an indication of how soon the countries most vulnerable to climate change will receive assistance," he added.
"The G20 has failed to deliver and the real work will now have to be done at Copenhagen."
Yvo de Boer, the UN's climate chief, said at the end of last month there were two "major opportunities" to make headway on finance before December.
One was the G20 finance ministers meeting in St Andrews, and the other was an EU summit earlier this month when leaders agreed that developing nations would need 100 billion euros (AU$161bn) a year annually by 2020, but failed to agree how much individual countries would give.
Swan hopeful
But Australian Treasurer Wayne Swan yesterday said they remain committed to figuring out how to pay for measures to reduce emissions at next month's UN climate change summit in Copenhagen.
He says they'll hold more talks before the summit begins.
The 20 leading economies committed to work for an "ambitious outcome" at December's vital Copenhagen climate change conference, but could not achieve their goal of agreeing how to distribute funding to poor countries to tackle the problem.
"We committed to take action to tackle the threat of climate change and work towards an ambitious outcome in Copenhagen" where countries will seek agreement on slashing greenhouse gas emissions, the communique said.
Global economy not out of the woods yet
Finance ministers also said they would stick to emergency stimulus support measures despite signs that the world was emerging from a 12-month financial maelstrom.
"We are not out of the woods yet and we need to maintain the measures we have taken," said Alistair Darling, finance minister of G20 president Britain.
With the world's biggest economy barely out of recession, US Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner said there was a "very broad consensus that growth remains the dominant policy."
Meanwhile, a proposal by British Prime Minister Gordon Brown for a tax on global financial transactions got a lukewarm response, with the United States offering no support.
A month before the December 7-18 Copenhagen conference, the G20 said it was fully behind fighting climate change, though it promised only to "take forward" work on funding and provided no figures.
"We committed to take action to tackle the threat of climate change and work towards an ambitious outcome in Copenhagen," the communique said.
"We discussed climate change financing options and recognised the need to increase significantly and urgently the scale and predictability of finance to implement an ambitious international agreement."
G20's climate role disputed
But there were signs of discord on the issue.
A French source told AFP late Friday that some emerging countries say the G20 is not the "appropriate forum" to discuss the issue.
Darling had earlier acknowledged there were "different views" around the table which would lead to "arguments."
"If there isn't an agreement on finance, if there isn't an agreement about contributions to make sure we can deal with this problem, then the Copenhagen agreement is going to be much, much more difficult," he said.
Outcome criticised
The outcome was criticised by campaigners including environmental group WWF.
In a statement, it said the G20 had "failed to reach agreement on the financing required for a global agreement to stave off catastrophic climate change" and voiced "scepticism" about promises to make further progress before Copenhagen.
No US support for tax on financial transactions
Brown had earlier urged the G20 to consider a tax on global financial transactions, known as a Tobin Tax, as part of a new "social contract" for banks.
The move would be one way of reflecting the "global responsibilities" which financial institutions have to society, said Brown, who has in the past been wary of such a tax because of fears it could harm Britain's financial sector.
Asked by Sky News television whether he backed a Tobin Tax, US Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner said: "No, that's not something that we're prepared to support."
In a later press conference, he added: "I think it is fair to say that we agree that we have to build a system in which taxpayers are not exposed to risk of loss in the future."
He said that "we look forward to working with our counterparts" on how to avoid this although declined to say if the US would actively oppose such a tax.
Brown stressed Britain would not act alone on the Tobin Tax, saying it would also have to be implemented by all the world's major financial centres, including the US, Europe, Asia, the Middle East and Switzerland.
"Let me be clear: Britain will not move unless others move with
us together," he said.
Earlier, around 200 people, many dressed in bankers' pinstriped suits, gathered on a beach in St Andrews to protest against the meeting - claiming the talking had to stop and firm action taken.
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