Crucial climate forum starts in Bonn
Written by Imelda V. Abaño/Correspondent, Business Mirror, 02 June 2009 23:38
POOR countries appealed to 174 countries on Monday to move faster on an agreement to fight global warming, saying they already are suffering from drought, floods and erratic cyclones brought on by rising temperatures.
The appeal came at the opening of a two-week meeting where around 3,000 delegates intend to start tackling the details of a new climate- change agreement that is to take
effect after 2012.
“We are concerned over the slow progress of the negotiations,” said Presidential Adviser on Climate Change Heherson Alvarez, lead negotiator for the Philippines. “We now need to get serious proposals on the table as climate change is a present reality.”
At the second round of climate talks in Bonn, world governments are to consider an ambitious new deal containing a broad range of options to combat global warming.
The new climate-change pact will succeed the first phase of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which requires 37 industrialized nations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by an average of 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2012.
Three further climate-change meetings are scheduled this year, ahead of the December event in Copenhagen, where the successor to Kyoto is to be formally adopted.
Scientists say the world’s carbon emissions must peak within the next 10 to 15 years and then fall by half by mid-century to avoid potentially catastrophic changes in weather patterns, a rise in sea levels that would threaten coastal cities and the mass extinction of plants and animals.
For this time, the United States, China and India had indicated they would join a coordinated effort to control the carbon emissions blamed for global warming.
“The success of Copenhagen needs strengthened and deeper cuts and more aggressive targets from developed countries,” Alvarez told BusinessMirror. “There will be a new climate deal, but not as strong as it is without the United States or other transition countries on board.”
Yvo de Boer, executive director of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), released a draft document on May 20 which forms the basis of the Bonn talks from June 1 to June 12.
The draft treaty suggests that developed countries must reduce carbon emissions by 75 to 95 per cent by 2050, measured against 1990 levels. It further said that emerging economies such as India and China would have greater leeway, aiming for 25-percent reductions by 2050, measured against a later baseline of 2000.
Developing countries are demanding assistance with financing, technology as well as on capacity building to stem climate change. Emerging economies as well are taking a two-pronged approach, seeking developed-world assistance in both mitigation efforts and help to adapt to the natural damage caused by climatic changes.
Alvarez and other developing country delegates again called on the industrial countries to slash greenhouse gas emissions by 30-40 percent from 2013 to 2017, and more than 50 percent by 2018 to 2022 from 1990 levels.
“We hope that the meeting will take things to the next level, with the discussions crystalizing ideas,” said De Boer. “Countries, so far, have narrowed gaps in many practical areas, for example on how to strengthen action for adapting to the impacts of climate change. This is, however, important progress given the very limited time negotiators have to get to an agreed outcome.”
Earlier, UNFCCC said majority of the world leaders want industrialized nations to sign up to deeper emissions cuts to match the scale of reductions being put on the table by developing countries.
Emissions of GHG, mainly carbon dioxide by industry and transport, are leading to climate change, which in turn is already reducing farm output and increasing both the frequency and severity of droughts, floods and storms, apart from raising the sea level. Developing countries, including the Philippines, are the worst affected.
To avoid the worst of those effects, the scientists of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said in a seminal 2007 report that emissions-mainly from fossil fuels from heavy industry and vehicles-should peak within the next decade and then quickly decline in order to limit the warming of the Earth by an average 2 degrees Celsius (3 degrees Fahrenheit).
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