The most effective solution for the climate change problem lies in stopping green house gas emissions altogether by the advanced and emerging countries through realising a near zero CO2 emissions target or a nearly 100 per cent renewable energy target
Progress on climate negotiations tardy
Sarwar Md. Saifullah Khaled
In Bonn early in September 2015, the Ad Hoc Working Group on the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action (ADP), the body set up by the United Nations (UN) Climate Change Convention to devise a successor to the Kyoto Protocol, was asked to produce a paper for the Paris summit at the end of 2015. The Kyoto Protocol, an international treaty, which extends the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) that commits State Parties to reduce greenhouse gases emissions, based on the premise that (a) global warming exists and (b) man-made CO2 emissions have caused it. In Bonn the ADP body after a week of negotiations, they ended up with just a bunch of ideas and lots of unresolved obstacles.
Sarah Blau, who led the European Unions (EUs) delegation in Bonn, said that We cannot go on working on that basis. We would love to start working on a new treaty, but all options have to be on the table. We have not reached that stage yet.
Thus the latest round of climate talks in the German city of Bonn have ended with a failure to deliver common grounds for the negotiations at the UN climate summit in Paris at the end of this year 2015. The Paris talks, involving all UN member states, are meant to deliver a draft that could lead to a new global climate treaty to replace the expired Kyoto Protocol. But according to a report of Climate News Network from Berlin on September 7, 2015, experts now fear that there will not be enough time left to see a major breakthrough. Jan Kowalzig, climate change policy adviser at Oxfam, described last weeks negotiations in Bonn as unbearably tardy. He said: If the negotiators keep up that slow pace, the ministers at the UN summit will get an unfinished paper that they will have to resolve with no time for reflection. The outcome will then most likely be an extremely weak new treaty that will not save the world from climate change.
Two major hurdles remain as the Paris deadline nears: climate finance, and emissions cuts. Back in 2010, the world agreed on building up a Green Climate Fund to help developing nations to tackle the impacts of climate change. The developed nations promised to provide the fund with US$100 billion by 2020. So far, only around US$10 billion is in that pot. So the question remains as to who will contribute how much; and by when? The diplomats in Bonn were unable to say.
On the scale of emissions cuts, it is becoming increasingly obvious that the existing pledges are far from enough to keep the world below the 2C level which is the internationally-agreed safety limit to try to prevent runaway climate change that is harming the planet earth. So the developing nations around the world are demanding regular updates and adjustments to the agreed emissions cuts every five years, to check whether the world is still on the right track.
The EU disapproves of this, saying updates in every 10 years are sufficient. As the EU wants to achieve its planned 40 percent CO2 reduction by 2020, it would not take its next step until 2030. Blau said that We feel confident that our 40 percent CO2 target by 2020 is one of the most ambitious goals, and we do not see any need for more regular adjustments. Greenpeace, a climate policy unit, said the EUs 10-year strategy could render the 2C limit meaningless. Head of the Greenpeace climate policy unit, Martin Kaiser, said : It would be a catastrophe if the new treaty froze the existing reduction targets and pledges. We do need more regular adjustments that respect the latest climate science outcomes and the development of renewable energies to save the planet.
The only progress made in Bonn ADP was the wider acceptance among UN member states of the need to write a long-term target into a new global climate treaty. But it remains unresolved whether that should be a zero CO2 emissions target, a 100 percent renewable energy target, or just a repetition of the existing 2C limit which many climate scientists think should in any case be reduced to a reasonable 1.5C level.
At the end of September 2015, heads of state are due to meet in New York at the UN general assembly. In mid-October 2015, there will be another preparatory meeting in Bonn, hoping finally to produce an agreed paper for Paris summit. Christoph Bals, policy director at the NGO Germanwatch, warns that We are definitely running out of time. What we truly need now are clear signals from the ministers and heads of state ahead of Paris. Otherwise, the next UN climate summit is most likely to fail.
Bangladesh, the most vulnerable country to global climate change, has expressed its deep concern, and urged the UN to take steps to ensure more contributions of the developed countries to the Green Climate Fund. Although the developed countries are responsible for climate change, the least developed countries, including Bangladesh, are facing adverse impact of climate change. But the participation of the developed countries in the green climate fund is not satisfactory.
However, it is true that the creation of a green climate fund to compensate certain adversely affected countries monetarily is not the true and sustained solution to the deteriorating global climate change problem, since climate change engulfs the entire world including the developed countries. The most effective solution for the climate change problem lies in very largely stopping green house gas emissions altogether by the advanced and emerging countries by way of realising a near zero CO2 emissions target or a nearly 100 percent renewable energy target.
The writer is a retired Professor of Economics, General Education Cadre
