De Boer Calls for $10-Billion Annual Commitment to Poor Nations

Yvo de Boer, head of the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat, called on rich nations to ante up $10 billion a year for the next three years to help poor nations begin to deal with climate change, Reuters reported. De Boer added that in 20 years, hundreds of billions of dollars would be required annually to tackle climate change issues: "Rich countries must ... list what each individual country will provide and how funds will be raised to deliver very large, stable and predictable finance into the future without having to constantly renegotiate the commitments every few years."

De Boer said the pledge was one of three goals for international climate change talks in Copenhagen set to begin Dec. 7, along with having the wealthy nations submit emissions targets for 2020 and for developing nations to plan what actions they would take. De Boer said: "I've seen some recent reports that say that Copenhagen has failed even before it starts, and I must say that those reports are simply wrong."

De Boer said the U.S. was a root cause of the lowered expectations, the New York Times reported: "We now have offers of targets from all industrialized countries except the United States," adding that he wanted from the U.S. "a numerical midterm target and commitment to financial support."

Todd Stern, chief climate negotiator for the U.S., said the Obama administration was considering what to do given that Congress was not expected to pass climate change legislation ahead of the talks: "What we are looking at is whether we feel that we can put down a number that would be provisional in effect, contingent on getting our legislation done. Our inclination is to try to do that, but we want to be smart about it."