The latest round of crucial UN-backed talks to identify how to raise climate finance for developing countries will take place in New York later today, with the UK warning that progress is essential to the chances of an international climate treaty being agreed.
The UN-appointed High Level Advisory Group on Climate Change Financing will hold its first meeting since Norwegian prime minister Jens Stoltenberg replaced outgoing British prime minister Gordon Brown as co-chair of the group, alongside Ethiopian prime minister Meles Zenawi.
British energy and climate change secretary Chris Huhne will also attend the group for the first time, as it begins work on developing a series of financing recommendations ahead of the UN's main climate change summit in Mexico in November.
Speaking ahead of the meeting, Huhne said that its recommendations are likely to have a vital role to play in the long-running international climate change talks.
"Helping developing countries tackle climate change is crucial if we are to secure a comprehensive and ambitious deal," he said. "Aside from a moral obligation to help vulnerable countries which have historically contributed little to the problem, it's also in our own interests to provide practical support."
The group, which includes a number of environment and finance ministers as well as economic experts, such as US president Obama's chief economic advisor Larry Summers, billionaire financier George Soros and British economist Lord Stern, is expected to consider a wide range of proposals designed to raise up to $100bn a year of public and private financing for climate-related projects by 2020.
In particular, they are likely to debate plans for a levy on international aviation and shipping, proposals put forward by the previous British governments for a Tobin tax on financial transactions, and suggestions on how to utilise the carbon market to raise funding for developing countries.
The issue of climate financing has emerged as one of the most contentious topics in the long-running international climate change talks with developing countries. They say they need billions of dollars a year to help invest in low-carbon technologies and adapt to those climate change impacts that are already inevitable.
Industrialised countries have largely accepted that they will have to provide greater levels of climate financing in future and agreed to provide $30bn of fast-start funding to developing nations over the next three years, as part of the deal thrashed out at last year's climate change summit in Copenhagen.
However, there is little consensus on how best to raise the larger sums that will be required in the second half of the decade and beyond. Numerous vested interests warn that levies on carbon-intensive industries or financial transactions could damage international trade, and cash-strapped governments may be reluctant to commit additional revenue for projects in the developing world.
