 What a difference 24 hours makes. Yesterday Australia was at the bottom of a list of countries ranked for their efforts to tackle climate change. Now it has pledged $200 million towards a global fund to fight global warming. The money will help poorer nations mitigate the impact of climate change. It's being seen as a U-turn for Prime Minister Tony Abbott's government which had earlier refused to join other wealthy nations in contributing to the fund. So what has caused the about face? Well joining me here in the studio is Camilla Tullman, director of the International Institute for Environment and Development. Thanks very much Camilla for joining us here on Impact. This is a bit of a U-turn isn't it? It is indeed and I think it shows how important these global climate negotiations can be for providing a focus on laggards in coming to a deal. So it's partly as you said the climate change performance index that put Australia right down at the bottom with Saudi Arabia and Canada I should say and a number of other countries that depend heavily on fossil fuel activity. How significant is this $200 million figure? Well in itself it's not a huge amount. I mean if you take Norway, Norway has pledged something just a bit below I think $130 million. So it's not a huge amount but it's the beginnings of a move in the right direction because of course when Tony Abbott's government came in last year they did a whole number of things like scrapping the carbon tax. So maybe next week we'll see them putting the carbon tax back on. Let's hope. Do we know where it's coming from? It's coming from the foreign aid bill but that's nothing unusual. In fact many governments take money from their foreign aid bill in order to fulfil climate change pledges which shouldn't really happen because this money should be on top of the existing aid budget. Why has Australia been so reluctant up until now to pledge anything? I think it's really you have to look at where their economies is coming from and it's largely mining both of minerals but also coal, coal oil and gas and coal if you like. Reliance on coal is obviously going to make you pretty wary of signing up to an act that basically wants to keep coal in the hole and to get emissions of greenhouse gases down as close to zero as we possibly can as soon as we can. So what does this about face, this U-turn say about Australia's attitude towards climate change? Well I think Australia's population is made up of two groups. There's the groups of if you like people very reliant on the mining sector, people who maybe have an attitude that's more 20th century and another group of people who are very much global citizens and who see Australia or who would like to see Australia on the front foot as playing its role as a global citizen taking on these big global challenges and of course the political conflict that we saw at the election this time last year was essentially seeing those two groups playing it out. Okay well thanks very much for joining us here on Impact that was Camilla Thulman director of the International Institute for Environment and Development.