CONTENTS: 1 - GLOBAL: Developing countries left to fend for themselves on climate change 2 - GLOBAL: The bumpy road to universal ARV access 3 - PHILIPPINES: Ketsana underscores climate change imperative 4 - SRI LANKA: Concerns growing over pace of IDP resettlement 5 - VIETNAM: Preparation helped to save lives 1 - GLOBAL: Developing countries left to fend for themselves on climate change BANGKOK, 30 September (IRIN) - Wealthy nations are dragging their feet on committing money to help developing countries adapt to climate change, leaving them to face the prospect of footing their own multi-billion dollar bills for their efforts, say delegates and activists at key climate change talks. About 2,500 country delegates and observers have gathered in the Thai capital for the penultimate round of negotiations under the UN _frame_work Convention on Climate Change treaty (UNFCCC), before the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December [http://en.cop15.dk/]. Yvo de Boer, UNFCCC Executive Secretary, said hundreds of billions of dollars would be needed annually, but the exact amount of money wealthy countries agree to provide would likely only be agreed at the last minute at Copenhagen. The challenge is to get money on the table to meet immediate needs and develop coping strategies. We can then use that to understand better how that figure will rise over time, De Boer told a regional UN briefing held at the sidelines of the talks on 29 September. A lack of commitment Delegates from developing nations lined up to complain about the lack of financing and support for adaptation, which would allow countries to implement plans and projects to cope with climate change. It is regrettable that no specific numbers have been put on the table for finance, said Ibrahim Mirghani Ibrahim, Sudanese chairman of the Group of 77 plus China, which broadly represents the developing world. Even worse, rich countries have shifted responsibility for adaptation on to developing countries themselves. The costs are eating into their mainstream national budgets, he said during the UNFCCC's opening session on 28 September. The Sudanese government is already going ahead with pilot projects costing about US$300 million to examine ways of responding to an increase in temperature of about one degree centigrade that has brought with it drought, flash floods and increased malaria, officials said. Developed countries are not willing to pay but we cannot wait for them, Saadeldin Ibrahim Mohammed Izzeldin, Secretary-General of Sudan's Higher Council for Environment and Natural Resources, told IRIN. We will start and hopefully there will be participation from rich countries. We don't expect all the money to come from outside, he said. India is already paying about 2 percent of its annual budget to combat the effects of climate change, Chandrashekar Dasgupta of the country's Energy and Resources Institute told IRIN. The focus of our response has to be adaptation. A traditional farmer lacks the knowledge, the information, the skills and the capital to adapt by bringing in drought-proofing measures such as drip-irrigation or switching crops, for example, he said. Adaptation costs According to preliminary findings from a global World Bank study (see: http://beta.worldbank.org/climatechange/content/economics-adaptation-...) released on 30 September in Bangkok and Washington, the costs of adaptation to climate change in developing countries are estimated at $75-$100 billion annually for 2010 to 2050. Billed as the most in-depth analysis of the economics of adaptation to date, the study was financed by the Dutch, Swiss and British governments. The World Bank study makes plain that taking action in favour of adaptation now can result in future savings and reduce unacceptable risks, Bert Koenders, the Dutch Minister for Development Cooperation, said in a statement. At this point, the costs this will entail can still be borne by the international community, to judge by the GDPs of rich countries, but for poor countries they are unacceptably high. The European Commission earlier this month [http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=IP/09/1297&fo...] also estimated that by 2020, developing countries would likely face annual costs of around 100 billion euros ($145.8 billion) to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to climate change impacts. Oxfam and environmental group Greenpeace have said that at least 40 billion euros ($58.35 billion) will be needed annually for adaptation measures for developing countries by 2020 (see: http://www.greenpeace.org/raw/content/eu-unit/press-centre/policy-pap...). Developing countries, which are least responsible for emissions, are being hit with a very large adaptation bill, said Antonio Hill, senior climate policy adviser with Oxfam International. He also said decision-making about how adaptation money is spent must be firmly lodged with developing countries, because they know best how to respond to the localized challenges they face. However, countries such as the US, Canada and Australia are stalling over how the cash will be spent, he said. These tight-fisted governments see climate change finance as just another form of aid and that therefore poor countries should be accountable to them over how the money is spent, he said. But this is not aid money. And aid money is unpredictable; sometimes rich countries make pledges but the money never comes. So we are trying to make sure Copenhagen leads to predictable cash flows. These are real costs. It's not just money, it's human lives. ts/ey/ds/mw [ENDS] 2 - GLOBAL: The bumpy road to universal ARV access JOHANNESBURG, 30 September (IRIN) - More than four million people globally are now on antiretroviral (ARV) treatment - a 10-fold jump in five years - but this is still less than half the people living with HIV who need it. A new report, Towards Universal Access, was released on 30 September by the World Health Organization (WHO), UNAIDS and the UN Children's Agency (UNICEF), and is the third annual review of international progress towards the Millennium Development Goal of universal access to treatment and prevention by 2010. At the end of 2007 about three million people were receiving life-prolonging ARV medication; in 2008 there was a 36 percent increase in people accessing treatment. Dr Stella Anyangwe, the WHO country representative in South Africa, told journalists at a press conference that the biggest gains in providing treatment had been made in sub-Saharan Africa, the worst-affected region, and about 2.9 million people were now on ARVs, compared to about 2.1 million in 2007. South Africa and Zimbabwe are among the countries that made the most progress in putting people on treatment in 2008, with both countries registering an increase of more than 50 percent from 2007 to 2008. Reaching the 700,000 mark [of people accessing ARVs] is something we hadn't really envisaged when we started providing treatment, admitted Dr Nono Simelela, CEO of the South African National AIDS Council. However, with an estimated five million people living with the virus - the highest caseload in the world - the country would have to push really hard to achieve universal access to treatment. Anyangwe attributed the huge jump in global treatment access to a rise in the number of people being tested for HIV as well as lower drug prices, especially first-line treatment regimens, which had dropped by as much as 40 percent. The report noted that 94 of the 101 countries surveyed in 2008 were providing free HIV testing at public sector health facilities. Despite these achievements there were still some major obstacles: people were still often tested at a late stage of the disease, and only accessed treatment when they were very ill and their immune systems could not recover. Also, supply chain management is still an issue ... some countries are experiencing stock-outs [of drugs], Anyangwe said. One of her biggest concerns was the widening treatment gap - about 9.5 million people are in need of ARVs, but only 4 million are getting them. At the rate we are going, with new [HIV] infections rising it will be almost impossible ... to keep providing free treatment to those who need it, she warned. Countries should start looking at financing their own treatment programmes, rather than relying heavily on external funding. If we keep people alive for longer ... then they may be able to buy their own treatment, she suggested. Prevention still the weakest _link_ Despite the remarkable progress made towards achieving universal access to treatment, countries were still lagging behind when it came to prevention. In 2008, 45 percent of pregnant women in low- and middle-income countries received treatment to prevent mother-to-child transmission, up from 35 percent in 2007, and far beyond the 10 percent reached in 2004. However, the number of new infections was still extremely high. Not enough is being done to balance two new infections for every person getting on treatment, said Mark Stirling, regional director of UNAIDS Eastern and Southern Africa, during the launch of the report. More than 2.7 million people became newly infected in 2007 alone. Stirling called for more resources to be pumped into the prevention response, and for more frank talk from leaders about why so many new infections were occurring. Nevertheless, most countries in East and Southern Africa had made a quantum shift towards universal access to prevention, and several countries in Southern Africa were pushing for male circumcision as a prevention measure to be rapidly scaled up. Stirling noted that the prevention response was becoming much more sophisticated than the ABC [Abstinence, Be faithful, Condomize] campaign of previous years , and national prevention strategies were now more focused on action. Yet all too often vulnerable populations were still faced technical, legal and socio-cultural barriers when trying to access HIV/AIDS services. Only 30 countries provided needle- and syringe-exchange programmes for injecting drug users, and the number of syringes distributed annually by these programmes was still well below the internationally recommended target of 200 syringes per injecting drug user per year. The report concluded that Without significant acceleration in the rate at which services are expanded and people are reached, millions of new infections will occur, more lives will be lost, and the human and economic burden on future generations will continue to increase. kn/he [ENDS] 3 - PHILIPPINES: Ketsana underscores climate change imperative BANGKOK, 30 September (IRIN) - The devastation and loss of life in the Philippines from tropical storm Ketsana is a strong indicator of events to come if industrialized nations fail to adequately tackle climate change, Filipino officials warn. The Philippines government has requested international humanitarian assistance and is undertaking massive relief operations after Ketsana struck the country on 26 September, leaving at least 246 people dead and more than 730,000 displaced, according to the country's National Disaster Coordinating Council [http://ndcc.gov.ph/home/]. Three days later, Ketsana pummelled Vietnam's central coast and has moved on to Cambodia, leaving dozens dead in its wake. Philippine officials said the storm underscored the need for progress in the talks about a new deal under the UN _frame_work Convention on Climate Change treaty (UNFCCC) [see: http://unfccc.int/resource/docs/convkp/kpeng.html] under way in Bangkok, and for cutting greenhouse gas emissions. The death, the pain and the damage in the Philippines help us to understand the necessity of an earnest negotiation, Heherson Alvarez, head of the Philippine delegation to the talks and presidential adviser on climate change, told reporters. Countries at the climate change talks in Bangkok are arguing over the burden of cuts in greenhouse gases and Alvarez urged industrialized nations to commit to substantial reductions. We should cut deep and cut early in order to moderate these destructive typhoons, he said. Think of Manila. Think of what can happen in this world. Alvarez said the Philippines experiences about 20 typhoons a year; they have been increasing in speed over the past 30 years from 100km to up to 200km per hour. The Philippines is gathering scientific data to show the effects of climate change on the country, but Alvarez said there was evidence to show a correlation between an increase in the level of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, and the severity of typhoons. We have no other reason to believe that these are desultory events, he said. Graciano Yumul, under-secretary at the Philippine government's national Department of Science and Technology, pointed to changing weather patterns in the world's second largest archipelago nation, including rain during the country's normally dry summer months from April to June. During summer this year, a lot of people died because three typhoons hit the country. Summer is supposed to be dry, not wet, said Yumul. ey/ds/mw [ENDS] 4 - SRI LANKA: Concerns growing over pace of IDP resettlement BANGKOK, 30 September (IRIN) - The international community is increasingly worried about the pace of resettling more than 260,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs) from closed camps in Sri Lanka, a senior UN representative warns. There is a growing concern from the international community that the pace of progress is simply too slow, Walter Kaelin, Representative of the UN Secretary-General on the Human Rights of Internally Displaced Persons, told IRIN. There is an urgent need to restore the freedom of movement for the displaced. They should be allowed to return to their homes, and where this is not possible, to stay with host families or in open relief centres, he said in a telephone interview from Geneva on 30 September. Kaelin completed a three-day visit to Sri Lanka on 26 September, having met government ministers and officials to discuss the treatment of the IDPs, who are in state-run camps in the north of the country. The Sri Lankan government says it is trying to expedite the resettlement of the IDPs, and has set a target of 70 to 80 percent to be released by year-end. It has defended the resettlement pace, saying it must screen the IDPs for rebels from the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), against whom it fought a bitter 26-year war. But the IDPs have been languishing in the congested camps since the end of the war in May without the freedom to leave, and Kaelin said their prolonged internment in the camps - not designed for long-term stays - was a concern. Certainly people do get food, they do get medical assistance, and there is education in the camps. So from that perspective, the government and international community have done a lot, he said. Our concern is that the screening process is going too slowly, and we also have concerns about the nature of the screening process. Transparency issues Under international humanitarian law, legitimate security concerns may justify the internment of civilians at the height of a conflict, but not longer than is absolutely necessary. Individuals must also be told why they have not been released. Kaelin said there was a lack of transparency in the screening process, and that people were also not being informed on an individual basis why they were being held. Unless there is very substantial progress in the very near future with the release of people, concerns about the violation of international humanitarian law will become a serious issue, he said. Top UN officials issued repeated calls this month for the IDPs to be resettled more quickly as worries mount over conditions in the camps ahead of upcoming monsoon rains. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon warned earlier this week in talks with Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ratnasiri Wickremanayake that a failure to rapidly resettle IDPs would lead to growing bitterness. And Kaelin's visit to Sri Lanka followed on the heels of Lynn Pascoe, the UN Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs, who called on the government to speed up the screening and release of IDPs. What was positive is that government has agreed that a substantial number of people should be released in the near future. But it remains to be seen to what extent this will be implemented, said Kaelin. The government announced earlier this month it would release IDPs into the custody of their relatives. [see: http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=86087] It has repeatedly said it is committed to resettling the IDPs, but first it has to clear some 1.5 million landmines and unexploded ordnance from former combat areas. It also says there is a lack of adequate housing and infrastructure in those areas to service the IDPs, and that reconstruction must take place first. ey/ds/mw [ENDS] 5 - VIETNAM: Preparation helped to save lives HANOI, 30 September (IRIN) - Ngo Thi Thanh has weathered dozens of tropical storms and typhoons living in central Vietnam's coastal region, but in her 60 years she has never seen the kind of destruction wrought by Typhoon Ketsana, which struck late on 29 September. It swept through just like an atomic bomb was dropped here, says Thanh, who lives in Quang Nam, the hardest-hit province, on the south-central coast of Vietnam. Her house, built of cement, sheltered dozens of friends and neighbours as 144km/h winds struck the town of Tam Ky, 7km from the coast. The storm is now gone but all the tin roofs were torn off and the streets are full of fallen trees, says Thanh. The city looks like it was just bombed. According to the government and the UN, 41 people were killed and 10 people are still missing. Nearly 60,000 homes were either damaged or destroyed. Sections of the ancient town of Hoi An, a UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural (UNESCO) World Heritage site, remain under 3m of water. Ugo Blanco, who is helping to coordinate the UN Development Programme's response to the storm, says the casualty figures could have been much higher. The typhoon was one of the worst in intensity, but not in terms of damage, says Blanco. This was because preparation was very, very good. When the storm hit the Philippines it triggered preparations [in Vietnam]. Two hundred thousand people were evacuated. It saved many, many lives. While Typhoon Ketsana was downgraded to a tropical depression as it moved inland over Cambodia and Laos, residents and officials in central Vietnam are now battling heavy flooding. At least one section of the national highway that runs north to south remains impassable. Millions are without electricity after sections of the national grid were affected. Nguyen Ngoc Quang, director of flood control and prevention in Quang Nam province, said rising waters, flooded roads and damaged bridges had isolated hundreds of thousands of people. We've mobilized soldiers to help deliver instant noodles, medicines and other supplies, says Quang. We won't let people go hungry. Though the rains have tapered off, rivers in some areas are still rising. Levels are expected to exceed the high water marks during the historic floods of 1964, according to Nguyen Lan Chau, deputy director of the National Centre for Hydro-meteorological Forecasting. Flood warnings remain in effect, she says, and many more people may need to be evacuated if waters do not begin receding soon. Quick response Residents were moved inland and vulnerable buildings were boarded up and reinforced with sandbags. Katsana killed at least 246 people in the Philippines before moving into the South China Sea. The Disaster Management Working Group, comprising representatives from the government, UN and NGOs, are sending teams to the six provinces hardest hit to assess the damage. They will issue their report, which will include recommendations for long-term relief and recovery projects, next Tuesday. We are now very scared, says Thang of Tam Ky. The worry is that another storm will come and we won't have enough time to physically and [emotionally] recover. mo/ds/mw [ENDS] More humanitarian news and analysis on Asia: http://www.irinnews.org/IRIN-Asia.aspx © IRIN. All rights reserved. More humanitarian news and analysis: http://www.irinnews.org [This item comes to you via IRIN, the humanitarian news and analysis service of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. The opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the United Nations or its Member States. 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