CLIMATE CHANGE: G8 Meet Asked to Show the Way Past Kyoto

By Julio Godoy Reprint | | Print |

Julio Godoy

COLOGNE, May 2 2007 (IPS) - The eight most industrialised countries and the five big developing ones must “send a clear signal” this year that they want agreement on a new international framework for tackling global warming, the world’s leading policy advisor on climate change said here Wednesday.

The industrialised G8 countries (the United States, Canada, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Russia) and the five strongest developing countries (China, India, Brazil, South Africa and Mexico) together account for more than 80 percent of all human-made greenhouse gas emissions.

These emissions caused by gases like carbon dioxide and methane from the burning of fossil fuels are believed to lead to a heating of the atmosphere, and consequent climate change.

Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the United Nations United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), says that this year represents a “make or break” situation for designing a worldwide binding policy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from 2013, after the end of the Kyoto Protocol’s validity in 2012.

“We need a strong international framework to be in place by 2010 to ensure that there is no gap between the end of the first commitment period in 2012 and the entry into force of a future regime,” De Boer said at a press conference.

De Boer was in the German city Koln for the opening ceremony of Carbon Expo, the international global carbon market fair organised jointly by the World Bank and the International Emissions Trading Association. The carbon meet began Wednesday.

Some 200 companies from over 50 countries are exhibiting new products and mechanisms to trade in carbon emissions and other carbon reduction instruments. Many developing countries are presenting new policy programmes to reduce their own greenhouse gas emissions.

De Boer said that the major developed and developing countries will have several opportunities to reach agreement this year on a new international treaty.

“The G8 will be meeting in Heiligendamm, Germany Jun. 6-8, together with these five developing countries,” de Boer said. Parties to the UNFCCC are set to meet for two weeks of negotiations and talks in Bonn, Germany May 7-18. Leaders from these 13 countries will then meet in Bali, Indonesia, Dec. 3-14 to continue negotiations towards an international treaty.

The conference in Bonn will be attended by around 2,000 delegates, including government representatives and members of business and industry, environmental organisations and research institutions.

The Kyoto protocol, which came into force Feb. 16, 2005, sets legally binding targets for reducing emissions in industrialised countries. So far, 171 countries have ratified the treaty, but the world’s largest greenhouse gases emitter, the United States, has not.

The protocol takes into consideration the need of developing countries for economic growth to reduce poverty, and therefore exempts them from taking action against their own greenhouse gas emissions. But economic growth, and its energy intensity in China, India, Brazil, Mexico and South Africa too comes with increasing emissions.

“A new international framework must give these five major developing countries incentives to create a carbon-low path of economic growth that allows them to continue tackling poverty, and at the same time does not endanger the global climate,” de Boer said.

De Boer said that efforts to create this new international framework have gathered momentum in recent months due to the worldwide awareness of the consequences of climate change.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate change (IPCC) that examines data across the world has predicted an average rise in global temperature of three degrees Celsius by 2100. This could lead to diminished food security for millions of people in developing countries, and to a drying of continental interiors, especially in Africa and South America.

Climate change is also leading to a melting of glaciers and ice caps, provoking a rise of sea levels and the destruction of human habitats all over the world.

Other consequences of global warming could be a stress on water resources, decimating of biodiversity, health impacts, and an increase in the intensity and frequency of extreme weather phenomena such as hurricanes, storms and inundations.