Australia scoops three Fossil of the Day Awards at COP20 Lima

Australia has picked up no fewer than three Fossil of the Day Awards for blocking progress at the COP20 climate change talks in the first week of the meeting...

The Fossil or the Day Awards are judged by the Climate Action Network (CAN), which includes 800 international environmental and climate justice organisations, who vote for countries judged to have done their 'best' to block progress in the negotiations.

Australia has already been named the world's worst-performing industrial nation on climate change in a report by the think tank Germanwatch , and in the first week on the COP20 we're not doing much better with three Fossil of the Day Awards under our belt.

How did we win three fossils?

As CAN have put it, one for our lost and damaged position on loss and damage, and two for our mistaken call to bail on the Green Climate Fund.

Australia has declined to pledge any money to the Green Climate Fund, unlike many developed countries including New Zealand and Norway, both of which are part of the negotiating group led by Australia. In fact Norway doubled their pledge, while Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop announced Australia would rather pay for climate change adaptation in vulnerable South Pacific island nations through its aid budget, than donate to a U.N. Green Climate Fund dedicated to the same purpose.

However, critics point out that Australia's last budget contained cuts to foreign aid by $7.6 billion over the next five years. This means reducing money for climate impacted countries.

Twenty-three countries have now pledged US$9.95 billion of the fund's initial $10-15 billion target, including some developing nations, while Australia has bailed out.

The Sydney Morning Herald reported: "Six out of 10 of Australians think Tony Abbott's Direct Action policy has left the country with an inadequate policy response to the problem of global warming, according to the latest Fairfax Ipsos poll."

Some still have hope for the rest of the Lima talks with the attendance (at her own insistence) of Julie Bishop.

We'll be continuing to watch her very closely, as Bishop has not actually shown any form of a green conscious shift, especially as last month she reprimanded Barack Obama for saying that the Great Barrier Reef was under threat. She said that Obama had ignored national efforts to manage the reef and climate change was not a threat.

We're also hoping to not win any more Fossil Awards, but perhaps that's being to optimistic.