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CLIMATE CHANGE: UN Panel Has Solutions for the Willing

Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, Apr 27 2007 (IPS) - Solutions to stop global warming outlined in a new United Nations-backed report may ignite heated debates, if not actually compel governments to make choices that would impact their respective economies.

Solutions to stop global warming outlined in a new United Nations-backed report may ignite heated debates, if not actually compel governments to make choices that would impact their respective economies.

The report, ‘Mitigation of Climate Change’, is the third in a series launched this year by the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The first two – scientific bodies of work that presented a bleak forecast – were ‘Physical Science Basis’, released in February, and ‘Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability’, released in early April.

Some 2,000 top scientists, environmentalists and government officials from over 180 countries are expected to gather in Bangkok for a week-long meeting to debate the new report before its release on May 4. The panel is seeking ways to limit or prevent greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and enhance ”activities that remove them from the atmosphere,” states a background note released by the U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP).

But a Thai academic and member of his country’s team reviewing the report says this third volume will generate a ” hot, fiery debate”. Anond Snidvong, an environment expert at Bangkok’s Chulalongkorn University, told IPS that ”because the solutions are directly related to present and future economic development of countries,” they would matter more to governments.

The success of the report will be gauged by how willing governments are to embrace the new alternative energy technologies to ”reduce GHGs in each economic sector of their respective countries,” he added. ”There is a need for immediate and quick action.”

Environmental activists heading for the Bangkok meeting say that governments from across the economic spectrum cannot afford to stall further the introduction of new technologies to combat carbon emission from fossil fuels, like oil, coal and gas. ”This report is very much about technology options that work to reduce carbon emissions based on evidence,” says Catherine Pearce, climate campaigner for Friends of the Earth International, a global network of grassroots environmental organisations. ”It is the first step to give governments credible solutions.”

The political commitment of countries will be tested in ”how strongly governments will want to invest and where money will be directed to encourage these technologies,” she told IPS by phone from London. ”The governments have no reason for delay anymore.”

In fact the global environmental lobby Greenpeace is hoping that the report will challenge governments from the developed and developing world to ”revolutionise the energy sector.” For the developing world it would mean investing in alternative technologies that help economic development without reducing energy requirements.

Currently, renewable energy accounts for only 13 percent of the world’s primary energy demands, of which biomass, used for heating, is the largest alternative energy source, states Greenpeace in a recent study. ”About 80 percent of primary energy supply still comes from fossil fuels.”

Oil provides 36 percent of the world’s fuel needs, while coal supplies 25 percent of the world’s energy, it adds. ”The share of renewable energy in electricity generation is 18 percent.”

”There is a need to phase in energy efficiency and a need for a massive uptake of renewable energy sources,” Shailendra Yashwant, climate and energy team manager for the South-east Asia office of Greenpeace, told IPS. ”The change is necessary for the good of the developing world and the worlds poorest people.”

The dire scenario that the poorest will be the worst affected by the drastic changes in the climate was captured in the 1,400-page second report, ‘Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability’, released in Brussels early April. In sub-Saharan Africa, for instance, 250 million people could face water shortages by 2020, it warned.

The first report in February, ‘Physical Science Basis,’ had scientists raising the alarm about the planet being condemned to even hotter months, warmer winters, a rise in sea levels, storms and hurricanes, droughts and thawing glaciers if the prevailing pace of carbon emissions continued.

These reports warned that the planet’s temperature could increase up to six degrees Celsius by the end of the century. The impact of such an eventuality was conveyed by the IPCC panel in another assessment – up to a third of animal and plant species could be threatened with extinction if global temperatures rose by two degrees Celsius.

The expected blueprint for change in the energy sector targets countries in the developing and developed world. Both have major polluters, ranging from developed nations like the U.S. and Australia to developing countries such as China and India. The U.S and China top the lists as the world leading producers of GHGs due to high dependency on fossil fuels.

”Failure to change our energy sources will not only affect future generations, but the impact will be felt with present ones also,” says Yashwant. ”This is the hour of solutions.”