Climate financing for developing countries: a post Copenhagen synopsis

Climate change is not a scientific myth or a phenomenon occurring in the distant future. Expert assessments published every five to six years since 1990 by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and most recently in 2007, demonstrate that climate change is already with us.~In the past two decades, governments‟ response to the prospect of global and long-lasting climate change has taken the form of a universal treaty on climate change. In its Article 2, the 1992 United Nations framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) clearly states its ultimate objective and that of related legal instruments (viz. the Kyoto Protocol) as the: “…stabilisation of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system… within a time frame sufficient to allow ecosystems to adapt naturally to climate change, to ensure that food production is not threatened and to enable economic development to proceed in a sustainable manner.”