Climate aid is tantamount to bribery

After eight years of pain, the environmental community is about to gain a US president they have some faith in. Barack Obama has said that climate change will be one of his priorities. The bad old days are over. No longer will the president send negotiators to Kyoto protocol talks with the aim of frustrating progress.

Those negotiators will, however, have to break with the past in another way. To beat climate change, rich countries need to invest billions overseas.

…But there is a bigger problem even than the daunting sums involved and the squeeze on budgets caused by the current economic crisis.

To make overseas aid have some real effect, the money needs to go to projects that the developing nations themselves deem necessary. It sounds obvious, yet other factors often determine where the money goes.

New Scientist