By IANS,
Toronto : Canada Sunday announced $100-million in aid to developing countries to flight global warming.
Making this announcement at the end of the Francophonie summit – a gathering of the 52 French-speaking nations – in Quebec City, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Canada was extending the aid as many poor countries didn’t have the resources to fight global warming.
La Francophonie – the French equivalent of the Commonwealth – is a grouping of 52 French-speaking countries and 13 observer nations. It meets every two years to discuss global issues and matters of importance to the whole bloc.
The Canadian announcement at the summit to help poor nations fight climate change assumes significance as the prime minister and his Conservative Party have come under fire not doing enough to check global warming.
“I am announcing that the government of Canada will add $100 million of aid to developing countries particularly vulnerable to climate change,” the prime minister said.
“This help will go to the countries that are least advanced and small insular states, especially in Africa, the Caribbean and the South Pacific,” he added.
Placed at 53 in a recent survey of 56 industrialized nations which contribute 90 per cent of greenhouse emissions, Canada is the fourth worst performer in 2007.
At the UN Conference on Climate Change held in Bali, Indonesia, in August to work out an agreement to succeed the Kyoto accord after 2012, Canada was accused of trying to “sabotage” the talks.
Climate Action Network, a global green advocacy group, had alleged at the time has obtained a Canadian government document revealing how Canada would derail the negotiations by insisting on stringent conditions on developing countries such as China and India.
The Network had said that Canada’s new stand flew in the face what the Kyoto accord outlines: more responsibility on industrialized nations than developing nations.
The David Suzuki Foundation, which is the face of Canada’s green movement and part of the Network, had said, “To ask countries with hundreds of millions of people in poverty to accept binding targets is not a position that is going to move along things here in Bali . It is going to derail everything.”