According to the UN’s top climate change official Yvo de Boer, developed countries will need to provide fast-track funding on the order of at least 10 billion USD a year through 2012 to enable developing countries to immediately plan and launch low emission growth and adaptation strategies and to build internal capacity. At the same time, developed countries will need to indicate how they intend to raise predictable and sustainable long-term financing and what their longer-term commitments will be.

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, an aggregate emission reduction by industrialised countries of between minus 25% and 40% over 1990 levels would be required by 2020 in order to stave off the worst effects of climate change, with global emissions falling by at least 50% by 2050. Even under this scenario, there would be an only a 50% chance of avoiding the most catastrophic consequences.

John Ashe, Chair of the Ad Hoc Working Group on Further Commitments for Annex I (industrialised) Parties under the Kyoto Protocol spoke both of the need raise the level of ambition of developed countries with regard to individual targets and the need to make rapid progress on the tools and rules that developed countries can use to reach their targets, such as carbon market mechanisms, land use and land use change and new gases. “A strong, clear agreement that incorporates all the outstanding issues under the Kyoto Protocol will have to be part of a successful Copenhagen agreement,” he said.