By ANDRE BAGOO Saturday, November 28 2009

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Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd at yesterday's media briefing. ...

AUSTRALIAN Prime Minister Kevin Michael Rudd yesterday pledged that his country will lobby for special funds to be allocated to less developed small-island states vulnerable to climate change.

At a media briefing at the International Financial Centre in Port-of-Spain, Rudd revealed Australia has proposed that five to ten percent of a special ‘fast start’ fund which has been proposed by Britain at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting be devoted to smaller states.

“What Australia has proposed today is if the United Nations agree to establish a fast start fund to assist...the most vulnerable states then five to ten percent of that fast start funding should be dedicated to small island states,” Rudd told reporters during a break from yesterday’s talks which were devoted exclusively to environmental issues and were scheduled to continue overnight.

“Small island states in the Pacific and Indian Ocean and of course here in the Caribbean are vulnerable.

“The particular vulnerabilities facing small island states from climate change are acute,” he said, noting that the impact of global climate change, “is not simply a problem, it becomes an existential threat.”

He noted that the US$10 billion fund, proposed by Britain PM Gordon Brown, would be supported by Australia under five conditions - fast start assistance should represent a substantial increase on existing climate change funding allocation; focus on most vulnerable countries especially small island states;

fund allocation must be done transparently, a focus on time-critical activities like addressing deforestation and finally, leaders should work to increase capacity of developing countries to absorb significantly scaled-up climate financing in the post 2012 funding arrangements including through leveraging private investment flows.

Rudd said he felt there would be enough time at the rest of the meetings to deal with key issues such as human rights of member states, that have emerged leading into CHOGM 2009.

“There is ample time in the period here to discuss the whole range of political and security matters which also affect the Commonwealth together with the impact of the global financial crisis on many states for whom the task of development has been made harder because of the crisis,” he said.