BONN, Germany (AP) 鈥 Environmental campaigners called Wednesday for fossil fuel producers to contribute to a new fund intended to help poor countries cope with climate disasters.
The so-called loss and damage fund was a key achievement of in Egypt. Developing nations have long demanded more financial support for the impacts from global warming, which is historically driven by pollution from rich countries.
鈥淚t is the prime responsibility for countries to fill that fund, particularly those with the greatest historic responsibility,鈥 said Rebecca Newsom, of the environmental group Greenpeace.
鈥淏ut in order to fill that fund at scale now, we need to really ramp things up,鈥 she said. 鈥淭he most obvious starting point is, of course, the fossil fuel industry, the creators of the crisis that we are now facing.鈥
Oil, gas and coal firms have faced mounting criticism in recent years for continuing to extract fuels that, when burned, release planet-warming greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. U.N. Secretary-General Ant贸nio Guterres called earlier this year for to be held to account for the damage they caused of their products.
Negotiations on setting up the loss and damage fund are a main focus of taking place in Bonn, Germany, this week. Some countries have pushed back against the idea of getting Big Oil to chip in from the start.
Mohamed Nasr, Egypt's lead negotiator, said there was a risk of 鈥渙verloading the very delicate and, I would say, very sensitive discussion that is happening鈥 before .
While Nasr said he wasn't opposed to contributions from the fossil fuel or aviation industry, these could be difficult to implement and the main focus should be on rich nations.
But Newsom, of Greenpeace, contrasted the with the .
鈥淚t doesn鈥檛 take a rocket scientist to join the dots between growing climate loss and damage around the world and exorbitant fossil fuel company profits,鈥 she said.
