Only political will at the highest level can break the ongoing deadlock in the global climate change negotiations. The biggest opportunity to give a push to the post-Kyoto talks is expected to come up during the UN secretary-generals climate change summit in New York on September 22, when more than 100 heads of state and government are expected to assemble, say sources involved closely with the preparatory talks.
The UN summit will be followed by a G-20 meeting in Pittsburgh, which is scheduled to deliberate on energy security and climate change, amongst other issues. Besides, two weeks of preparatory talks are to be held in Bangkok in September and Barcelona in November before the final round concludes in Copenhagen in December. At the just-concluded meet in Bonn, the negotiations remained deadlocked over the issues of emission reduction targets of developed countries, and provision of financial support to developing countries to limit emissions. The talks need to move much faster to deliver strong outcomes in areas such as adaptation, technology and building skills in developing nations, according to Yvo De Boer, executive secretary, United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
During the talks, developing countries accused developed countries of attempting to shift the burden of reducing emissions to them without shouldering their historical responsibility. The commitments made by developed countries, excluding the US, have the potential to cut down emissions by 15-21% by 2020 on a baseline of 1990 base, which is insufficient to cap the temperature rise since pre-industrial times at 2C. The threshold has been set by the intergovernmental panel on climate change to avoid worst climate impacts like heat waves, flash floods, severe droughts and rising sea levels.
The US House has passed a climate change Bill, which seeks to reduce the countrys emissions by 17% by 2020 and 83% by 2050 on a baseline of 1990. The Bill, yet to be passed by the Senate, proposes to impose trade tariffs on countries that dont limit their emissions.
This has come under fire from developing countries, including India, with climate change envoy Shyam Saran calling it protectionism under a green label.
Besides, the issue of financing continues to remain a hurdle. In Bonn, poor countries and small island states demanded $400 billion annually to enable them to tackle climate change. The demands vary. While WWF has called for $160 billion per year to fight climate change, the UN has calculated the cost of adaptation and mitigation at $200 billion every year by 2020. UNFCCC has said $10 billion would be a good starting point for poor countries to draw their national plans to fight climate change.
Source: The Financial Express
Published on 16 August 2009