IRIN
JOHANNESBURG,
27 November 2007 (IRIN) - The United Nations Climate Change Conference
on the Indonesian island of Bali in December is not expected to achieve
any dramatic breakthroughs on saving the planet from global warming, a
senior official of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
told IRIN. But, it could well produce an important timeframe on cutting
greenhouse gas emissions, predicted Rajendra Pachauri, the IPCC chair.
The Bali climate conference will look at a new deal to be put in place after 2012, when the first phase of the Kyoto Protocol
(KP), a commitment made in 1997 by 36 industrialised countries to
reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least five percent against the
baseline of 1990, expires.
"[In Bali] you will get no big announcements on cuts, but possibly a plan of action," said Pachauri.
Typical
greenhouse gases are carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and
fluorinated gases, which trap heat in the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide
enters the atmosphere by burning fossils fuels and chemical reactions;
methane emissions result from livestock, production of natural gas, oil
and coal; nitrous oxide is also emitted during agricultural practices,
while fluorinated gases are produced from various industrial processes.
In terms of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC),
adopted at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, which has
176 signatories and is in effect the parent treaty of the KP, the
burden was placed on developed countries because they could afford it
and had historically contributed to the problem by emitting larger
amounts of harmful gases per person than the developing world.
The
United States, the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gases, and
Australia have not signed the protocol. The US objected as the KP
excluded China and India, two of the world's fastest growing economies,
and Australia chose to ally itself with the US.
At a press
briefing on 26 November Pachauri indicated that the recent change of
government in Australia could affect negotiations in Bali. Labour
leader Kevin Rudd, whose party won the general elections on 24
November, has promised to ratify the KP during his campaign.
In agreement with many climate experts, the UN Development Programme's (UNDP) Human Development Report 2007/2008,
called Fighting Climate Change: Human Solidarity in a Divided World,
released on 27 November, warned that if greenhouse gas emissions were
not cut by at least 30 percent in the next 10 to 15 years, global
temperatures would be set to increase by two degrees Celsius.
Scientific
reports from the IPCC since 2005 have made it clear that climate change
is a reality, and a two-degree Celsius change will destroy 30 to 40
percent of all known species, with bigger, fiercer and more frequent
heat waves, floods and droughts.
A doable timeframe?
Most
environmentalists hope Bali will deliver a general agreement to cut
emissions substantially by 2020. "Ideally, industrialised nations will
commit to deep and decisive emissions reductions of up to 30 percent
over the coming few decades," said Nick Nuttall, spokesman for the
Executive Director of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP).
"But
a more realistic, but nevertheless solid outcome, will be if all
nations define the parameters of the negotiations for a post-2012
emission reductions regime ... by 2009," when the next meeting of all
parties to the UNFCC takes place in Copenhagen, Denmark.
Mike
Shanahan, spokesman for the International Institute for Environment and
Development, a UK-based policy research institute, pointed out that the
Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012, took two years - from 1995 to
1997 - to negotiate, but only came into force in 2005.
"So the
next two years will be critical. Two outcomes are possible: a fair and
appropriate agreement in Copenhagen, or an incomplete and inadequate
one that will do little to protect the climate system and those most
vulnerable to climate change."
The best outcome would be a
"Bali Mandate", an action plan for an agreement by 2009 that would
include more countries making commitments to cut emissions and broaden
the scope of the KP to include emissions from deforestation, said Shane
Rattenbury, Political Director of Greenpeace International.
"Under
the Ad Hoc Working Group on Further Commitments, developed country
governments in Bali could agree on a range of cuts between 25 and 40
percent. This would be a positive signal but, ultimately, what matters
is what is in the agreement in 2009 [in Denmark]."
There had
been a "seismic shift in the politics of climate change in recent
years," noted Kevin Watkins, author of the 2007/08 Human Development
Report, so he was "cautiously optimistic" about Bali. "In Europe,
several political leaders are championing the case for deep cuts; the
US has also witnessed a groundswell of support for binding cuts."
Action speaks louder
The
KP put in place three so-called "market-based mechanisms" to reduce
greenhouse gases: emissions trading, joint implementation and the Clean
Development Mechanism (CDM). This means industrialised countries can
earn and trade emissions credits by implementing projects in other
developed countries or developing countries, and put the credits
towards meeting their targets.
"These mechanisms help identify
lowest-cost opportunities for reducing emissions and attract private
sector participation in emission reduction efforts. Developing nations
benefit in terms of technology transfer and investment brought about
through collaboration with industrialised nations under the CDM,"
according to the UNFCC.
Ecologist Vandana Shiva, a leading
environmentalist, physicist and founding director of the Research
Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology, based in India, said
the details of the KP, which weighed in favour of "big corporates" in
the industrialised countries by offering them opportunities to earn and
trade emission credits, indicated that "getting the right agreement was
more important".
Watkins cautioned in the UNDP report that
"opportunities for generating emission trading credits overseas should
not displace mitigation in the European Union". The problem was
"practical action", which lagged far behind what "science points to in
terms of the magnitude and timing of cuts".
On 20 November,
Yvo de Boer, Executive Secretary of the UNFCC, revealed that the total
greenhouse gas emissions of 40 industrialised countries rose to a near
all-time high in 2005, continuing the upward trend of 2004; according
to the UNDP report, carbon dioxide emissions in the United Kingdom, for
example, have not fallen in the past decade.
Nevertheless, de
Boer seems optimistic, announcing in a press release that the 15
percent cuts promised by the Kyoto signatory countries were feasible by
2012 if additional measures like emissions trading were put in place.
The
UNDP report revealed that just four developing countries - Brazil,
China, India and Mexico - accounted for three-quarters of all projects
under the CDM, while sub-Saharan Africa represented less than two
percent.
US, India, China: "Shadow-boxing?"
According
to the UNDP report, developing countries should cut emissions by 20
percent of 1990 levels by 2050. However, these cuts should occur from
2020 onward and be supported by international cooperation on finance
and low-carbon technology transfers, allowing poor countries to
develop.
Until recently the 49 Least Developed Countries
(LDC), mainly in Africa, and a coalition of 39 small islands and
low-lying coastal countries, the Alliance of Small Island States
(AOSIS), had backed China and India in demanding that rich countries
accept historical responsibility for climate change.
But they
now want China and India to reduce their emissions. Over the next
decade China will become the world's largest source of carbon dioxide
emissions and India is now the world's fourth largest emitter.
The
US cited China and India for refusing to ratify the KP but Shiva
accused the US of "shadow-boxing", saying, "The US has merely shifted
its emissions off-shore to China, which has become the world's largest
factory. The US is responsible for any additional emissions in China
and India."
UNEP's Nuttall commented, "The past negotiations
have been marked by a lot of finger pointing between countries with
playing the blame game." UNEP, among other organisations, has been
trying to build "confidence and trust between developed and developed
nations" for the past 12 months.
Encouragingly, countries on
both sides of the fence are rising to the challenge. "In the US, many
sectors of business and industry, and local authorities, need very
little convincing now and are urging the administration to go further
and faster on the climate change issue." Nuttall pointed out that some
300 cities in the US were setting KP-style emission cut targets, and
around half the US states have established renewable energy
requirements.
"Countries like India and China have publicly
stated concern about the impacts of climate change, if unchecked. The
missing ingredients are finance and technology transfer - the
international community needs to find a way to get the latest and
cleanest technology to developing economies, and devise mechanisms to
finance this transition and transfer," he said.
Developing
countries are also coming to the party: plants and trees remove carbon
dioxide from the atmosphere, making forests critical to the health of
the planet, so Brazil is reducing rates of deforestation by over 50
percent; the ratio of energy use to gross domestic product (GDP) is
called "energy intensity" and China has reaffirmed targets for energy
intensity reduction as well as renewable energy.
"With the
right regulatory framework, fiscal incentives and intelligent market
mechanisms, industry can rapidly innovate and produce the
climate-friendly products and goods so centrally needed," said Nuttall.
"In India, for example, UNEP has helped bring solar power to 100,000
people ... [by making solar panel installations] affordable to poorer
rural communities."
"Adaptation apartheid"
The
world was headed towards "adaptation apartheid", where "the citizens of
the rich world are protected from harm; the poor, the vulnerable and
the hungry are exposed to the harsh reality of climate change in their
everyday lives," suggested South Africa's Archbishop Desmond Tutu in
his contribution to the UNDP report.
"Put bluntly, the world's
poor are being harmed through a problem that is not of their making.
The footprint of the Malawian farmer or the Haitian slum dweller barely
registers in the Earth's atmosphere," he said, referring to the
quantity of the greenhouse gases that individuals generate, for
instance by driving a car.
An
Adaptation Fund funded by CDM transactions was set up under the KP to
help poor countries cope with the impact of global warming, but the
UNDP report said the governments of developed countries had failed to
keep up with their commitments. The UNFCC has also set up the Least
Developed Country Fund, the Special Climate Change Fund, and the
Strategic Priority on Adaptation, another funding mechanism.
"By
mid-2007, actual multilateral financing delivered under the broad
umbrella of initiatives set up under the UNFCCC had reached a total of
US$26 million. This is equivalent to one week's worth of spending on
flood defence in the United Kingdom," said the UNDP report. Developing
countries will need about $86 billion a year by 2015 to adapt to
environmental changes that will make it more difficult to feed
themselves.
Incentives serve as penalties
Opinion
is divided over imposing stricter penalties to make rich countries pay
up. "The Kyoto Protocol has a good compliance mechanism, which forces
countries to accept responsibility if they fail to meet their targets
and obliges them to do even more in following years," said Greenpeace's
Rattenbury.
The maximum penalty for non-compliance is
suspension of membership, but the UNDP's Watkins felt the current
mechanisms were "too weak" and suggested trade measures like those
imposed by the Montreal Protocol on Substances That Deplete the Ozone
Layer, often hailed the most successful international treaty.
The
Montreal Protocol, which became effective in 1989, was designed to
protect the ozone layer by phasing out the production of a number of
substances believed to be responsible for ozone depletion.
Pachauri
said it would impossible to impose penalties along the lines of the
Montreal Protocol, "where countries were dealing with a limited number
of gases with clear health implications; but in this instance the
impact [of greenhouse gases] is very complex and wide - it would be
impossible to monitor."
Shiva suggested rewarding green
initiatives, such as renewable energy, which could amount to a penalty
for those not adopting such measures.
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