Dec. 11 (Bloomberg) -- Poor countries at the United Nations climate talks in Poland may win approval to tap into a $990 million fund as early as next month to cope with the damage of global warming, their biggest victory in 11 days of debate.

Envoys from the 187 nations negotiating in Poznan, Poland, plan to change rules so that countries in need of aid may apply for them starting in January, said Yvo de Boer, the UN’s climate chief. “I expect and hope that we will see the launch of the adaptation fund” by then, he said at talks due to end tomorrow.

From Malawi in southern Africa and Guatemala in Central America to Asia, rising temperatures have intensified the ravages of droughts, floods and storms, scientists say. Glaciers on Mount Kenya are melting, the nation’s rivers are lower and the desert has encroached from the north and southeast, forcing farmers to adapt to new conditions, Nobel Peace Prize-winner Wangari Maathai said.

Doling out funds quickly “can help by getting farmers to plant trees on their land to protect the soil and ensure you have microclimates that retain moisture,” Maathai said yesterday in an interview in Poznan. “Rainwater can be harvested with terraces, trenches, holes and irrigation. They’re important tools that aren’t too expensive but farmers need financial support.”

The Kenyan won the Nobel Prize in 2004 for her conservation work through the Green Belt Movement, which she founded in 1977.

In nearby Tanzania, residents are seeing similar climate- related issues. “Droughts are more intense in Tanzania than before,” said James Ngeleja, principal officer for the east African country’s Environment Management Council. “They have reduced the electric power we can generate from dams.”

Halfway Point

The adaptation fund development comes as delegates in the western Poland city of Poznan reached the halfway point of two years of talks to sign a global-warming treaty next December in Copenhagen.

Many developing nations want the industrialized world to set the pace by committing to cut greenhouse gases blamed for global warming at least 25 percent from 1990 levels by 2020.

So far only Norway, with a 30-percent pledge, has accepted, with the European Union saying it will ramp up its 20 percent reduction target to 30 percent if a deal is agreed by next year.

That leaves money for adjusting to climate change as the main benefit that might emerge from Poznan for nations in the poorest continent as well as in parts of Latin America and Asia.

“Launching the adaptation fund and making it operational is clearly a cornerstone of this conference,” the UN’s de Boer said.

Malawi’s Hopes

In Malawi, Mazoe Gondwe, 58, said she hopes her village of Rumphi in the African country’s north can benefit from funds to pay for cement to improve irrigation as rainfall becomes less predictable.

“For the past six to seven years we have been experiencing drought and erratic rainfall; the patterns were unpredictable,” Gondwe said in an interview in Poznan, where she was flown to by the London-based development charity ActionAid. “Water is not much of a problem because we have a lake and we have rivers and streams that do not dry. What we need is improved irrigation.”

The adaptation fund draws its income from the UN’s Clean Development Mechanism. The CDM allows countries with binding greenhouse-gas emissions limits to meet their targets by investing in clean-energy projects in developing countries. Those projects generate carbon credits, tradable permits that each represent a ton of carbon dioxide. Two percent of the credits are given to the adaptation fund.

Almost $1 Billion

The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, which oversees international global-warming regulations, estimates the CDM will generate 2.9 billion credits by 2012, sending 58 million to the adaptation fund. That would value the fund at 754 million euros ($990 million) at the current price of about 13 euros per credit.

Because the CDM already operates, credits are sitting in the fund and can’t be turned into cash grants without changing rules.

The legal changes, which need final approval by all nations tomorrow, would open up payments of as much as $300 million a year, the UN estimates.

“There’s no need to have money sitting in a bank account while it could be doing some good work in developing countries,” Artur Runge-Metzger, head of the European Commission’s climate and energy unit, said. Making the fund operational is “very important because we have been talking about adaptation for a long time.”

Delegates have been locked in debate over how the fund will pay out the money with developing countries demanding faster and easier access, said de Boer, the executive secretary of the UN climate secretariat, which oversees the negotiations.

“At the moment there are a lot of intermediaries and a lot of paperwork,” Guatemalan Environment Minister Luis Ferrate said yesterday in an interview in Poznan. If the payments aren’t made simpler, “what we’re going to have is layers of consultants and very few projects. It’s the law of the funnel. You pour a lot in at the top and all you get out the bottom is a little trickle.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Alex Morales in Poznan via amorales2@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: December 11, 2008 08:15 EST