Wealthy nations should establish a fund that could spend $100 billion a year helping the world's poorest countries to tackle climate change, AP cited British Prime Minister Gordon Brown as saying today. Calling for the fund to be in place by 2020, Brown said that wealthier nations would be able to raise funds through the expansion of international carbon trading market _ in which carbon reductions achieved by one company can be sold to another _ and existing development aid. Environment ministers from industrialized nations first discussed proposals for the creation of such a fund at a conference in Denmark last month. Campaigners praised Brown for drawing further attention to the scale of assistance the developing world is likely to need to make reductions to greenhouse gas emissions. Brown's comments followed a report issued Thursday by the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency which said developing countries are now emitting more than half of the world's carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas blamed for climate change. «We must help the developing countries adapt to the changes in climate which are already now occurring and which over the next few decades, however much we cut emissions, we cannot now avoid,» Brown said, delivering a speech at the London Zoo. Brown said the U.N. climate change conference in Copenhagen, Denmark, in December must bring a new global pact on reducing greenhouse gas emissions. He called for all nations to agree to cut theirs to 50 percent below 1990 levels by 2050.
