Deals on Aid and Forests Reported Close to Completion at Talks

With only two full days remaining at the Copenhagen climate summit, negotiators said they were close to reaching agreement on a pair of key issues — the size of a fund to help developing nations deal with global warming, and the creation of a program under which industrialized nations would pay developing nations not to log tropical forests. Leaders of the African Union and the European Union announced that they had all but finalized a deal that would provide a short-term climate fund for poorer countries of $10 billion, a sum that would rise steadily until 2020, when developed nations would contribute $100 billion annually to the fund. The fund is to be used by developing nations to adapt to climate change and to adopt renewable energy technologies. African nations temporarily walked out of the talks on Monday to protest what they considered to be paltry sums promised by industrialized nations. But Ethiopian Prime Minster Meles Zenawi and Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt announced that significantly higher contributions to the fund would be forthcoming in the next decade. Negotiators are still working on ways to pay for the fund, ranging from a carbon tax, to a tax on international transactions, to direct contributions from wealthy nations or financing by the International Monetary Fund.
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