COPENHAGEN, Dec. 17 (Xinhua) -- Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Tun Abdul Razak on Tuesday called on developed countries to commit200 billion U.S. dollars per year by 2012 and 800 billion U.S. dollars per year thereafter to help fight climate change.
He told the high-level segment of the United Nations Climate Change Conference here that developing countries require long-term financing of at least 800 billion U.S. dollars a year for adaptation and mitigation of climate change.
"If we are to take a more ambitious and probably more scientifically accurate temperature rise target of 1.5 degrees centigrade, the funding required by developing countries could be as high as 1.5 trillion U.S. dollars annually," he said.
"The developed countries also have to guarantee financing and technology transfer," Razak added.
However, at Thursday's press conference, U. S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the U.S. was prepared to work with other countries toward a goal of jointly mobilizing 100 billion dollars a year by 2020 to address the climate change needs of developing countries.
She said the funds should be provided "in the context of a strong accord in which all major economies stand behind meaningful mitigation actions and provide full transparency as to their implementation".
Razak said the yearly 10-billion-dollar fast track fund being proposed in the short term was a "mere pittance" and the amount was "woefully inadequate". In fact, the U.S. so far hadn't given its concrete climate change funding amount for developing countries, he added.
According to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), developing nations are not committed to emission reduction targets, while rich nations are bound to quantified emission reductions and provision of financial support to developing nations.
The prime minister even suggested developed countries should have "negative emissions" so that developing countries would still have some carbon emission space.
The key element for a successful Copenhagen outcome was the retention of the Kyoto Protocol and putting into effect its second commitment period by the Annex 1 Parties, Razak said.
Those developed countries that are not Protocol parties "must undertake a comparable effort in emission reduction as agreed to in the Bali Action Plan," he said.
