Poorest Nations Team Up With EU to Urge More Climate Ambitions

The European Union and the world’s poorest nations joined forces to call for more-ambitious measures to reduce carbon emissions globally and to encourage private investors to team up with public institutions to finance the fight against climate change.

Ministers from more than 30 least-developed countries and EU officials pledged today at an informal gathering in Brussels to push for an ambitious outcome of the next United Nations climate summit in Doha toward the end of this year.

Countries worldwide should step up their emission-reduction efforts and deliver on their pledge to iron out by 2015 a global deal to cut pollution, EU Climate Commissioner Connie Hedegaard told a press conference today.

“It’s very clear we’re all in agreement: no backtracking,” Hedegaard said. “It’s very important to get more people on board.”

The UN Environment Program said in November that current pledges to reduce greenhouse gases by 2020 need to double in order to keep the planet on a trajectory that limits warming since industrialization to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit).

“If we respect what science is saying, we should have much better ambitions,” Fatou Gaye, Gambia’s Minister for Forestry and Environment, told the news conference.

To contact the reporters on this story: Ewa Krukowska in Brussels at ekrukowska@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Lars Paulsson at lpaulsson@bloomberg.net