Climate talks branded a lot of hot
air By Stephen Leahy
DOHA, Qatar - Rich countries
came to the UN climate talks in Doha intent on
delaying needed action on climate change for
another three years and a still to be hammered out
new global treaty. This delay will be extraordinarily
expensive and risky.
Every year that
fossil fuel emissions fail to decline adds to the
cost and reduces the odds
that a global temperature rise can be kept below
two degrees centigrade (C).
"Science says
emissions need to peak in 2015," said Kumi Naidoo,
executive director of Greenpeace International, as
the final plenary of the 18th session of the
Conference of the Parties concluded last Saturday
night, a full day late.
The 195 parties to
the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change
(UNFCCC) approved a set of documents called "The
Doha Climate Gateway" that does not increase
emission reductions or guarantee much-needed
financial help to poor countries suffering present
and future impacts of climate change.
"Doha is a betrayal of people living with
impacts now. And it is a sellout of our children
and grandchildren's future," said Naidoo.
"The fossil fuel industry won," said Alden
Meyer, the Union of Concerned Scientists' director
of strategy and policy, who has attended nearly
every one of these climate negotiations over the
past 18 years.
"The science is clear that
four-fifths of known fossil fuel reserves must
stay in the ground but we continue to burn them
like there is no tomorrow," Meyer said. "Doha became more of a trade fair …
Negotiators protected the interests of
corporations and not the needs of people," he told
IPS.
More than 16,000 delegates
participated in the two-week conference of the
parties (COP) in Doha, Qatar, a country rich in
oil and gas in the heart of the Middle East fossil
fuel empire.
Meyer, along with
representatives from more than 700 civil society
organizations, blamed the US for blocking
proposals for greater emissions cuts. The US also
refused to commit a singly penny to assisting
countries hard hit by climate change. US
negotiators did acknowledge poor countries were
suffering costly damages and losses.
The
world has already warmed 0.8 degrees C, altering
weather patterns and increasing extreme events
which have led to nearly 400,000 deaths and more
than US$1.2 trillion being lost every year,
according a 2011 study.
A delegate from
Bangladesh told IPS that climate-related damages
cost his country 3-4% of its annual GDP. Climate
change, which is also driven by deforestation and
land conversion for agriculture, is undercutting
development and will push his country's and other
countries' economies into a steady decline, he
said.
To help governments cope,
industrialized nations promised to put $100
billion a year into a Green Climate Fund by 2020.
To bridge the gap until then, developing nations
asked for $60 billion in total by 2015. Britain,
Germany and a few other countries promised to
contribute $6 billion.
But the US, Canada,
Japan and others agreed only to more talks next
year.
"The US spends $60 billion on
its military marching bands," said
Naidoo. The
only hope is to build a robust grassroots movement
to force countries to act in the interest of the
public and future generations, he said.
"We have to build a new social
movement like (the one) that overcame slavery,"
agreed Oxfam International climate change policy
advisor Tim Gore. "We reject what our
leaders are doing here. We are more angry, more
impassioned to defeat this process."
The COP
process is an obstacle because a few big countries
can easily block the will of the majority, said
Mohamed Aslam, former environment minister and
chief negotiator for the Republic of the Maldives.
"The signs of global warming are obvious
and we know that the safe limit is to stay below
1.5 C … and yet we are failing to act," Aslam said
in a press conference.
The UN spends
millions of dollars on these negotiations and they
are going nowhere, he said. "We are running out of
time. [We] need to take this to another fora," he
said.
What is lacking is a real
commitment to reduce global emissions, said
Christina Figueres, executive secretary of the
United Nations Framework Convention on Climate
Change (UNFCCC). "What needs to change most is
political will," Figueres told IPS.
In
Doha, the UN secretary-general announced a world
leaders' summit in 2014 to hammer out emission
reduction targets to keep warming below two
degrees C. The Doha Climate Gateway confirmed
details for a new negotiation track to have a new
global climate treaty ready for ratification in
2015 and go into force in 2020.
Under this
agreement all countries will likely be obligated
to make emission cuts, varying in depth and
timing. Without additional cuts before 2020,
reductions afterwards will need to be rapid and
massive, moving to a zero-fossil fuel emission
society in a few decades based on the science.
The Doha agreement includes a second phase
of the Kyoto Protocol with the European Union,
Australia and a few other countries agreeing to
cut fossil fuel emissions between 2013 and 2020.
However, they did not set new targets, agreeing
instead to a mandatory review of targets in 2014.
The nations involved only represent 12% of
global emissions, and do not include large
developing country emitters like China, India and
Brazil. The US has never participated, while
Canada and Japan have opted out of the second
phase but are supposed to make to make comparable
cuts but offered nothing new.
"Rich countries think they can
protect themselves from the impacts, leaving the
poor with no clear pathway to the future," said
Mohamed Adow of Christian Aid. "Our leaders have
let us down. Civil society will have to lead to
get the future we really want."
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