Jocelyn Newmarch
10 June 2010
Johannesburg — THE United Nations's top climate official, Yvo de Boer, yesterday warned that time was running out to agree on a global, ambitious and fair deal on climate change, even as Bolivia revealed data which showed industrialised countries' greenhouse gas emissions would actually increase if accounting loopholes are allowed to proceed.
Climate talks in Bonn, Germany, began last week to prepare for a conference in Cancun, Mexico, at the end of the year, with the smallest and poorest countries pushing hard for a deal this year.
"We got a yellow card in Copenhagen and the referee's hand will edge toward the red one if we fail to deliver in Cancun and beyond," Mr de Boer, head of the UN climate secretariat, said in his farewell speech, referring to last year's conference which ended in disarray and has been widely perceived as a failure. He received a standing ovation from delegates.
Christiina Figueres, Mr de Boer's successor, said she was confident governments would be able to agree on a global deal because "humanity has no other option".
She said she did not doubt that the Cancun conference would be successful, but that the form success would take was still under discussion. Ms Figueres paid tribute to Tourism Minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk, SA's candidate for the position and said she was confident SA would help facilitate discussions when it hosts the annual conference next year.
Ms Figueres said she was approaching her new job with optimism tempered by hard-edged realism. "I continue to be confident that governments will meet this challenge, for the simple reason that humanity must meet the challenge. We just don't have another option," she said.
But, she warned, political progress on climate change would lag behind scientific warnings for many years to come - and those who expected a quick fix would be disappointed.
An experienced and highly regarded negotiator for Costa Rica who was educated in Britain and the US, Ms Figueres takes the helm as executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change on July 8.
But much of this week has been spent discussing minor technical issues, with little progress on substantive political issues, such as the glaring gap between the pledges put forward by industrialised countries and the amount required by science to keep global warming below catastrophic levels.
"Negotiations are going in the wrong direction," said Lim Li Lin, from the Third World Network, adding that existing pledges from countries did not respond to the needs of science or equity and that developing countries' proposal for an aggregate target should be accepted.
Bolivia's sensational analysis, based on data calculated by the UN climate secretariat itself, shows that if arcane accounting rules for forestry and surplus emissions are passed, industrialised countries would be allowed to increase emissions by 4%-8% on 1990 levels by 2017, under the Kyoto Protocol. The US, which continues to reject the protocol, would not benefit from the loopholes, but the European Union would.
Industrialised countries' pledges fall far short of the estimated 25%-40% cut needed to keep world temperatures rising more than 2° C - a level which, if exceeded, is thought to lead to catastrophic climate change. So far only voluntary pledges of 17%-25% have been made.
Bolivia's ambassador Pablo Solon said his country had put forward a proposal to discuss the domestic commitments of countries, which would give greater clarity on what action is being taken to reduce emissions.
"This is not about clean development. This is about how you account for what you are doing," Mr Solon said.
Mr de Boer warned that participants could not afford to postpone action much longer, and admitted that current pledges are insufficient to keep global warming from reaching dangerous levels.
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You can get on your own what you couldn't get at Copenhagen. Stop exporting Oil and Gas! Money from the developed world has never helped you in the past. It subverts your economy with inflation, and makes you dependent on imports to spend it on. Fight your climate problems locally, and you will have more effect. Cleanse your rivers and lakes of weeds and silt. Reforest your hills and plains. Use your labor glut to do it. If money were the solution now, it would have solved your troubles long ago. Foreign money is the source of the corruption that plagues your continent.
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