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BY JAYA RAMACHANDRAN
BERLIN (IDN) - India, China and 53 African countries – together home to
more than half of the world's population -- have opened what may turn
out to be a new chapter in the history of international climate
diplomacy as the clock ticks down to Copenhagen.
While India and China comprising about 37 percent of the global
population have decided to join forces to push for an agreement at the
landmark UN conference on global warming coming December, Africa will
be represented in Copenhagen by one cohesive delegation spearheaded by
the Conference of African Heads of State and Government on Climate
Change (CAHOSCC).
The African delegation, representing some 970 million people, will
consist of the chairperson of the African Union (AU), senior government
ministers of Ethiopia, Algeria, Republic of Congo, Kenya, Mauritius,
Mozambique, Nigeria and Uganda. The delegation will also include the
chairperson of the African Ministerial Conference on Environment, the
chairperson of the AU Commission, and technical negotiators on climate
change from member states.
The Conference of African Heads of State and Government on Climate
Change agreed Aug. 24 in Addis Ababa that the African Union demand
US$67 billion per year from the global community in compensation for
the effects of climate change. The annual sum would be spent on
establishing science-guided projects to help with adaptation and
mitigation, reports SciDev.Net.
The not-for-profit London-based Science and Development Network said
after being endorsed by the African heads of state at their two-day
meeting Aug. 30-31 in Tripoli, Libya, the demand would be tabled at the
UN conference in Copenhagen Dec. 7-18.
As SciDev.Net reported, the figure of US$67 billion a year has been
debated for some time, including at African Union (AU) summits in
February and July of this year, gaining prominence at the Nairobi,
Kenya, meeting of African ministers of environment earlier this year.
The payments would need to be achieved by 2020, the Addis Ababa
conference agreed.
CENTRES OF EXCELLENCE
At the meeting in the Ethiopian capital, some delegates called for the
sum to be nearer US$200 billion a year, representing Africa's share of
the four per cent of global GDP (Gross Domestic Product) which, it is
argued, should be spent on adaptation and mitigation worldwide.
Delegates said they would like to see the money go towards establishing
centres of excellence on climate change. The AU will push for
compensation through technology transfer and capacity-building, rather
than cash.
The AU wants individual countries to use the money to carry out
national plans of action, which mostly consist of finding ways to use
efficient technologies in the energy, agriculture and water management
sectors, as well as obtaining intellectual property rights for these
technologies
The South African representative at the meeting, Judy Beaumont, said
that the amount required for adaptation programmes globally is more
than US$400 billion and that at least half of this should go to
projects in Africa, Kimani Chege of SciDev.Net wrote in an article
published Aug. 27 in allafrica.com
Beaumont added that Africa needs low-carbon technologies,
energy-efficiency projects and renewable-energy technologies, which
have previously remained elusive because of a lack of affordable
financing and difficulty in obtaining intellectual property rights.
"This is not about begging for cash but the urge for a common but
differentiated responsibility," Beaumont pointed out. "Most developed
countries took a dirty route to development, and Africa cannot take the
same route."
"WE WANT AN AGREEMENT"
In an interview Aug. 25 in Beijing, where he met with Xie Zhenhua,
China's top climate change negotiator, India's Environment Minister
Jairam Ramesh said India and China should not be viewed as a "negative
or obstructionist force". He said: "Both of us were of the view that we
should be part of the solution. We want an agreement in Copenhagen."
Ramesh rejected calls for binding carbon emission-reduction targets to
be placed on developing countries such as India, and reiterated the
country's stance that developed countries should reduce carbon
emissions by 40 percent from 1990 levels by 2020. U.S. climate-change
legislation passed by the House sets the goal of a 17 percent reduction
from 2005 levels by 2020.
Should developed countries agree to India's stance, which Chinese
Foreign Ministry climate-change official Yu Qingtai earlier this month
called "quite fair," India and China would have to “respond very
positively," Ramesh said in an interview with Bloomberg News.
India and China are looking for developed countries to share more
carbon-reducing technologies with poorer nations and help finance
projects, Ramesh said. Both countries say their economic development
would be unfairly hurt if they were forced to accept binding
greenhouse-gas emission reduction targets.
A DEVELOPMENT ISSUE
“For us, climate change is not just an environmental issue, for us, climate change is a development issue," Ramesh said.
On August 24, Xie, a vice minister of China’s National Development and
Reform Commission, said “the focus of disagreement remains on each
country’s proportion of responsibility for emissions reductions,
funding and technology transfer," the official China Xinhua News Agency
reported.
Emerging economies, including India, have said they need access to
funds and technologies such as wind turbines to meet emission curbs and
sustain growth. India requires $5 billion a year between 2012 and 2017,
in addition to its current investment plans, to support a transition to
low-carbon energy generation, the United Nations Development Program
said in its Human Development Report 2007/2008, citing research by the
Energy and Resources Institute.
Ramesh said he and Xie discussed the idea of when their two countries’
carbon emissions would peak. Mid-August, China released a report from
government-run think tanks estimating that the country’s emissions
would peak by 2030. The report also recognized that China had surpassed
the U.S. to become the world’s biggest producer of greenhouse gases.
The government in Beijing says it is increasing energy efficiency and
promoting the use of renewable power to cut the amount of energy it
consumes per unit of gross domestic product 20 percent by 2010 from
2005 levels.
India says it has one of the lowest carbon emissions per capita in the
world and is responsible for 4 percent of output while the U.S. is
responsible for 20 percent. The South Asian country is the
fourth-largest emitter of carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels,
trailing China, the U.S. and Russia.
Developed countries must bear “historic responsibility" for industrial
emissions of greenhouse gases they have produced, Indian Prime Minister
Manmohan Singh said on July 7. “It is the developing countries that are
the worst affected by climate change."
CHINA GETS READY
Meanwhile China is considering putting climate legislation on its
legislative agenda, according to a draft resolution on climate change,
which has been submitted to the Standing Committee of the National
People's Congress (NPC), reports China Daily.
"China will draw up new laws and regulations to provide a legal basis
for combating climate change," said Wang Guangtao, director of the
NPC's environment and resource protection committee. The resolution
shows good coordination between the government and legislative body in
advance of the Copenhagen meeting, said Yang Fuqiang, director of
global climate change solutions at environmental group WWF. "Once the
government signs the new treaty, the NPC will ratify it," he said.
The United States is the only developed country that has not ratified
the climate pact. "The former U.S. president signed the Kyoto Protocol
back in 1997, but when the official delegation came back with the
treaty, the Senate refused to ratify it," Yang said.
Also, once the proposed climate change laws are worked out, China will
have "legally binding actions" to fight the illegal emissions, said
Zhang Jianyu, China program head of the U.S.-based Environmental
Defense Fund.
"China already has a bunch of laws and regulations related to climate
change and environmental protection, but the climate legislation will
give the forces fighting global warming more legal power," Zhang said.
Existing laws and regulations related to climate change and environment
protection should be revised to better combat global warming, according
to the draft resolution, he said. (IDN-InDepthNews/30.08.09)
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