Climate control

Policymakers must recognise the connection between climate change and development policy, as Satu Hassi tells Martha Moss.

From freak weather events to food scarcity, water resources to labour productivity – climate change will have far-reaching and profound consequences for the world’s poorest nations.

It is widely accepted that the impacts of global warming are likely to be most keenly felt in developing countries, with the UN estimating that the problem will cost these nations around €100bn per year.

Indeed, there is much debate over what rich nations must do – and how much they should pay – to reduce emissions and help poor countries cope with the effects of climate change.

With this in mind, Brussels last month proposed that the EU pay between €2bn and €15bn per year by 2020 to help poor countries protect themselves against global warming, should world leaders agree on a climate deal at December’s key summit in Copenhagen.

EU decision makers hailed the move as an important landmark in overcoming the dispute about how much industrialised countries should pay, but environmentalists claimed the amount pledged was too low.

This issue will come under the spotlight at the 2009 European development days, which will be held in Stockholm next week bringing together 4000 people to discuss how to make aid more effective and meet the millennium development goals (MDGs).

One MEP who will be attending is Satu Hassi, who said the financing proposal went some way towards bridging the funding gap. “I’m happy that the commission started speaking in terms of billions, not millions – but the figure is still far too low,” she tells the Parliament Magazine.

Hassi, a Finnish Greens deputy and Member of Parliament’s environment committee, will use the Stockholm conference to highlight the interconnection between climate and development policy.

“You cannot realistically discuss development issues without taking into account both the need to adapt to climate change and the need to mitigate,” she says.

A former development minister, Hassi has strong views about who should pay for preventing and dealing with climate change. Rich countries, including the EU, must “understand that the current situation is very unfair to the developing countries”, she argues.

She says, “Climate change which is already happening is, by-and-large caused by us. Developing countries are right when they say ‘you have made this mess, you have to clean up’. But the unfair truth is that global emissions cannot be reduced rapidly enough with measures in just the rich countries."

"This also means that developing countries have to limit their emissions. First they have to delay growth, then they have to cut their emissions.”

Hassi warns that coastal areas, and those close to rivers, are likely to be severely affected by an increase in flash flooding, while agricultural changes are set to affect farmers in developing countries.

Development days will bring the environment into focus amid warnings that climate change could hamper efforts to halve poverty by 2015. One of the ways climate change threatens the achievement of the MDGs is in relation to food security.

Experts are warning that world hunger is likely to increase as a result of reduced crop yields, caused by erratic rain patterns.

And while the link between women’s empowerment and climate change may not be an obvious one, the goal to eliminate gender disparity in education by 2015 is said to be jeopardised by decreasing natural resources, which burdens women’s health and leaves less time for income generating activities.

Hassi is calling on Europe and parliamentarians in particular, to help build the “totally new framework” she says is needed for development financing in light of climate change.

She is pleased with what parliament has achieved so far, and points to last year’s deal which will see some of the money raised from emissions trading permits earmarked to helping developing countries.

“We didn’t get as strong wording as we would have liked, but that became a political promise in the context of climate legislation,” says Hassi.

“I hope this parliament will continue to show the way and be as ambitious in this aspect of climate policy.”

This article was first published in issue 296 of The Parliament Magazine, 19 October 2009