Lima Climate Talks Split on Role of Adaptation, Finance in New Deal

Negotiators at U.N. climate talks in Lima are divided over whether governments should include finance and adaptation commitments in the national offers of action they are due to put forward early next year as the building blocks of a new global climate change deal.

Some developing countries, including the poorest ones, want adaptation efforts to be part of their contributions, arguing it will help determine their needs for funding and technical aid.

The cost of adapting to climate change in developing nations is likely to be at least two to three times higher than previous estimates of $70-100 billion a year by 2050, even with ambitious cuts in planet-warming emissions, according to a new report from the United Nations Environment Program.

But the European Union and Japan said on Friday they want national offers to be focused only on mitigation - actions to reduce planet-warming emissions.

Elina Bardram, the European Commission's top climate negotiator, told journalists the EU sees the process for national contributions as designed specifically with mitigation in mind, and it shouldn't stretch to adaptation and climate finance.

With the new global deal not expected to enter into force until 2020, countries would struggle to plan their spending on climate finance or adaptation so far ahead of time, she added.

"We cannot possibly make forward commitments on something that is going to happen from the national budgets in seven years' time," she said.

But that "doesn't mean that we are not open to including some processes that would provide our partners with reassurances that these elements (of adaptation and finance) are absolutely core to the 2015 agreement", she said.

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