NEF Slams Blair For Endless, Empty Promises On Environment - Observer

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Speaking to The Observer, the NEF's policy director, Andrew Simms, said that despite the Blair-Brown initiative to place climate change and development issues at the centre of the Gleneagles summit, the government's record since then had been dismal. Britain was not meeting its own targets for cutting greenhouse gases nor helping less developed countries cope with a 'crisis they had virtually no role in creating'.

He singled out a 2001 pledge by the richer countries, including Britain, to put in place a £215m annual fund by last year to help poorer countries deal with the effects of climate change. In fact, he said, the most recent official figures showed that barely one tenth of that amount had been provided over the past year.

Though one quarter of the amount provided had come from Britain - about £6.6m - Simms said the government had still spent more than 80 times that figure on domestic flood management projects. To deal with the threat of potentially catastrophic flooding in just one African state, Tanzania, required an estimated £7.7bn - '340 years worth of the annual funding currently being provided by the developed countries,' he said.

He was also critical of the levels for carbon reduction by British industry agreed in the latest phase of the European Union's emissions trading scheme. Under the arrangement, announced this month, Britain's agreed reduction was 8m tonnes. Environmental groups involved in talks with the government said Environment Minister David Miliband had been pressing for a reduction of 10m tonnes, but had been overruled on economic grounds by the Treasury.

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http://observer.guardian.co.uk/politics/story/0,,1859323,00.html