As negotiators in Bonn plod through the first draft texts about a new U.N. climate treaty, due to be agreed in Copenhagen in December, the real attention is on European Union finance ministers meeting in Luxembourg on Tuesday.

They will discuss proposals on international financing for climate change measures, including a report that says poor countries will need about 100 billion euros ($142 billion) a year by 2020 to help them cut emissions. The leaked document also says climate change adaptation costs in all developing countries could reach 23-54 billion euros per year in 2030.

The finance ministers will make recommendations for discussion at a European Council meeting on June 18 and 19.

While the numbers in the draft report aren't so far from the amounts developing countries and aid groups say are needed for poor countries to tackle climate change, some campaigners are sceptical the EU is ready to put any concrete pledges of money on the table.

ActionAid warns that the bloc's member states have so far been unable to reach agreement on supporting any of the international financing proposals being floated, and Tuesday's meeting of finance ministers is unlikely to change that.

The agency argues that, if disaster is to be avoided in Copenhagen, Europe must provide its fair share of the finance and find innovative ways of doing so.

"(This funding) is not going to fall out of the sky - it will require a combination of automatic mechanisms, including global carbon taxes, to raise the money," said Tom Sharman, ActionAid's head of climate change.

A blueprint issued on the sidelines of the Bonn talks on Monday, written by almost 50 leading environmentalists and backed by groups including WWF, Greenpeace and Germanwatch, called on industrialised countries to raise at least $160 billion a year from 2013-2017, mainly via auctioning of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions allowances, to help developing nations cope with climate change.

Oxfam's EU climate policy adviser, Tim Gore, says the EU must stick its neck out and show leadership on financing. "What the EU does has massive implications for (the U.N.) negotiations," he told AlertNet. "It needs to get out of this 'you first' approach."

SHOW AND TELL

Climate campaigners are tired of what they see as reluctance on the part of rich countries to make promises on funding and targets to cut emissions before others reveal what they are prepared to do - including mitigation efforts by developing countries. Poorer nations, meanwhile, want to know how much money rich governments will stump up before they agree to cut their own emissions.

"This starts to raise questions about where we're heading for Copenhagen," said David Waskow, Oxfam America's climate change programme director. "Countries are going to have to leap and they're all going to have to leap together."

Some campaigners are pinning their hopes on July's Group of Eight summit in Italy. Non-governmental organisations working on climate issues are considering issuing a call for the world's richest governments to provide the $2 billion needed by the world's poorest governments for urgent actions they have identified to cope with the effects of global warming.

"That would be a great first step, even though it's a drop in the ocean," said Gore. "It would show that developed countries are going to live up to their commitments."

Saleemul Huq, head of climate change at the International Institute for Environment and Development, says there are rumours G8 leaders are planning to make an announcement on climate change financing, including for adaptation.

"The finance needs to be put in; it has to come early in the negotiating process," he said. "Finance is the glue that will hold everything together."

Huq says the Bonn talks are taking place in a positive atmosphere, but can't be expected to produce more than a text that will form the basis for concrete negotiations in the coming months. "Things are moving in the right direction, but not fast enough and far enough," he said.

For Huq, the key to pushing the process forward lies with wealthy nations' finance ministers - who aren't in Bonn - as it's they who will decide how much money climate negotiators can offer. Without this, the draft text will stay blank on the amount of funding poor countries can expect to receive.

"They would like many tens of billions, but they would probably be satisfied with a few tens (of billions)," Huq said.

If governments are serious about reaching a new global deal to tackle climate change by the end of the year, it seems they'd better start putting their money where their mouths are.

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