Climate finance hits snag before key UN summit

The G20 talked big but delivered little on climate finance, campaigners said yesterday, as the clock ticks down to the UN's key Copenhagen summit in just one month's time.
One of the key talking points on Saturday for finance ministers meeting in the Scottish town of St Andrews had been working out how to deliver cash from rich to developing countries so they can tackle climate change.
The G20 agreed to work for an "ambitious outcome" at Copenhagen, which aims to cut greenhouse gas emissions. They also "recognised the need to increase significantly and urgently the scale and predictability of finance."
But there was no agreement on how cash should be delivered, although there would be "further work" on the issue, the final communique said.
Nor was there a clear figure for how much G20 countries would commit, although sources had played down hopes that this would be achieved before the meeting started.
With the Copenhagen talks starting on December 7, time is running out for a financial agreement to be in place by then.
"If there isn't an agreement on finance, if there isn't an agreement about contributions to make sure we can deal with this problem, then the Copenhagen agreement is going to be much, much more difficult," Alistair Darling, finance minister of hosts Britain, warned before the final session on Saturday.