storms , the rising sea levels – it is existential stuff for us .” Many of the priorities for developing countries in Marrakech will centre around the important question of financing . The good news , says Thomson , is that the swift entry into force of the agreement means that financing can now begin to flow .
“ It ’ s not more talk , it ’ s freeing the finance up ,” he said . However a key question for developing countries remains : will they be left to fend for themselves as droughts , floods and other extreme weather events push their already fragile development backwards ?
This question continues to trouble Sano . At the 2013 UN climate talks in Warsaw , Poland , Sano made international headlines with his emotional plea for the victims of Typhoon Haiyan which had recently devastated his home Sano , who is now Executive Director of Greenpeace South- East Asia , says that a key point of interest in Marrakech will be the continuation of discussions around the Loss and Damage mechanism .
Although developing countries had wanted this mechanism to be reviewed in 2015 in Paris richer countries wanted it pushed back to 2016 because they saw it as too controversial . Another way that developing countries can potentially be assisted to adapt to increasingly severe weather events is through the USD 100 billion in climate financing that
developed countries have promised to provide by 2020 .
Shakya says that while various reports suggest that the financing is on track to reach this goal , these reports do not provide details for the least developed countries on “ instruments and indeed on the targets .”
In particular , Shakya emphasized that much more financing needs to flow to least developed countries , particularly for adaptation , financing which is more likely to come from grants provided through the aid programs of developed countries .
“ The finance that reaches poor people and allows poor people to decide how they ’ re going to use it has huge returns in terms of the resilience in those communities ,” she said .
However much of the $ 100 billion dollars in financing will instead consist of loans to middle income countries for mitigation activities such as the construction of wind farms .
This means that poor countries like Haiti , will be left with little additional assistance to cope with increasingly extreme weather events such as Hurricane Matthew , which was made more severe by climate change .
Source : Inter Press Service
June marks 14 consecutive months of record heat for the globe Average sea surface temperature was also record high
Persistent heat on land and in the sea this June shattered records , yet again .
June 2016 was 1.62 degrees F above the 20th century average , breaking last year ’ s record for the warmest June on record by 0.04 degrees F , according to scientists from NOAA ’ s National Centers for Environmental Information . NOAA ’ s global temperature records dates back 137 years to 1880 .
For the year to date , the average global temperature was 1.89 degrees F above the 20th century average . This was the highest temperature for this period , surpassing the previous record set in 2015 by 0.36 degrees F .
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