London, September 17: Nearly 4.5 million more children in impoverished nations could die in 2010 if developed countries fail to deliver additional funds to them to combat climate change, a new report warned on Wednesday.
In a report titled ‘Beyond Aid – Ensuring adaptation to climate change works’, charity Oxfam said an additional new funding of at least USD 50 billion per year must be mobilised to help developing countries to adapt to climate changes.
The report warned that 75 million fewer children are likely to go to school and 8.6 million less people could have access to AIDS treatment if aid is diverted to the fight against climate change. It said that 4.5 million more children die in 2010 than would otherwise have been the case.
“It is precisely now that aid needs to increase, not be diverted,” Oxfam International CEO Jeremy Hobbs said.
The report said the additional amount to be mobilised must be beyond aid – additional to existing Official Development Assistance (ODA) commitments.
Continued development progress is the best way to address pre-existing levels of vulnerability to the risks that climate change is multiplying. But without new and additional funds for adaptation, developing country governments will be faced with an impossible trade-off between helping their populations adapt to climate change or providing them with basic services such as healthcare and education, it said.
“India is already spending nearly three times as much as adapting to climate change as it does on health,” it added.
“It is time for rich country politicians and policy makers to stand up and be counted: they either support the principle of additionality or show that they are content to watch recent development gains – children attending school, mothers surviving childbirth, the sick receiving life-savings drugs – reversed,” the report said.
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`India phased out ozone depleting substances ahead of target`It noted that the forthcoming UN meet on Climate Change in New York and the G-20 meeting in Pittsburgh this month provide a historic opportunity for national leaders to make an unequivocal political commitment to fund adaptation: adequately, equitably and additionally.
This will help resuscitate the international climate negotiations and lay the foundations for a fair and safe deal at Copenhagen in Dec.
In 2000, the international community agreed a historic set of goals aimed at freeing a significant proportion of the world’s population from poverty, disease, hunger and illiteracy. The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) marked a turning point for international development and brought rich and poor countries together in a shared endeavour to end poverty and suffering.
Climate change now threatens to unravel this progress and drive a larger wedge between industrialised countries – which became rich through decades of fossil fuel consumption – and poor countries – which are being hit the hardest, it said.
In the report, Oxfam called upon the international community to commit to an effective international framework to help poor people adapt to climate change and to allow development to continue. This must be at the centre of any climate deal agreed at Copenhagen, it said.
–Agencies