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CLIMATE CHANGE: Trade, Finance Issues Add to Wrangling in Bali

Marwaan Macan-Markar

NUSA DUA, Bali, Indonesia, Dec 10 2007 (IPS) - Three poles – trade, finance and the environment – have emerged at a pivotal international conference on climate change, posing a daunting task for leaders to find common ground before the end of this two-week meeting, Friday.

The pressure to draft a blueprint acceptable to the nearly 10,000 participants at the United Nations climate change conference was confirmed Monday, when leading members of green groups admitted that negotiations could spill over into Saturday. What activists do not want is for the gathering on this resort island to conclude with a document incapable of saving the planet from possible environmental catastrophe.

While groups like the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) agree that an ideal solution lay in bridging ecology with economics, what they are troubled by is a hint of the trade and financial lobbies at the conference muscling their way in to set the tone for a green-friendly future. ‘’At some point, the climate talks will have to get into the realm of trade and finance, but the climate issues should not be subsumed by trade talks,’’ says Shruti Shukla, environment and climate policy coordinator for WWF’s India office.

‘’The environment has always been the stepsister of the economic priorities that countries have. So this meeting must be an opportunity to reverse that and be used as a confidence building event between the trade, finance and environment ministries,’’ she added in an interview. ‘’This is a chance for the environment agenda to be accepted as the one that will drive the future trade and development agenda.’’

A meeting over the weekend on the sidelines of the conference, which runs from Dec. 3-14, confirmed that such worry is not misplaced. It featured trade ministers and senior officials from 32 countries, where the United States and the European Union made a pitch for developing countries to lift their tariff barriers for 43 environmentally friendly products to enter the local markets. Among the products on a list approved by the World Bank are wind turbines and hydrogen fuel cells, ‘The Jakarta Post’ newspaper reported on Monday.

‘’This is a familiar story of the U.S. and the E.U. once again pushing for liberalisation in services in the name of climate change,’’ Nicola Bullard, senior researcher at Focus on the Global South, a Bangkok-based think tank, told IPS. ‘’Developing countries are asking for a technology transfer for a greener environment, but instead they are being asked to reduce their tariffs. The U.S. and the E.U. are trying to profit even after having polluted the world.’’

Such a pro-developed countries stance – expected to be echoed again this week when finance ministers arrive to add weight to the climate change talks – is an attempt to shift the responsibility for a healthier earth away from the shoulders of the world’s industrialised giants. ‘’The developed world wants to talk about economics here because it does not want the entire burden for a solution to fall on them,’’ says Sanjay Vashist of the Centre for Global Environment Research, a New Delhi-based think tank.

But as a report released here on Monday confirmed, the developed nations who have emitted the major share of carbon dioxide and greenhouse gases (GhGs) into the atmosphere since the industrial revolution cannot turn a blind eye on the havoc these heat-trapping gases are said to cause in national parks, forest reserves and other protected areas in the developing world.

‘’More than half the world’s protected territory is vulnerable to impacts of climate change, with some regions facing the disappearance of current climatic conditions by 2100 or a transition to conditions not found on Earth in the previous century,’’ warned a study conducted by scientists from Conservation International and from two U.S.-based universities, the University of Wisconsin and the University of Maryland.

Among the vulnerable countries where ‘’90 percent or more of the total protected territory has climate conditions that will disappear globally or be transformed are at least 11 in Africa. They range from Benin, Burkina Faso and Burundi to Ethiopia, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Rwanda, Sudan and Uganda.

Asian countries such as Bhutan and Sri Lanka stand to be affected as will Bolivia, Colombia, Cuba, Ecuador, Mexico and Venezuela in Latin America.

No wonder an announcement by the Norwegian government on Sunday to grant up to 545 million US dollars a year over the next five years to help tropical countries halt deforestation went down well with the environmentalists. The Norwegian delegation to the Bali meeting, which will include the prime minister, finance minister and environment minister, is expected to lobby other developed nations to follow this financial package that was made in addition to its annual aid budget.

‘’The grant that was announced yesterday was a huge victory for the green groups in Norway who had lobbied for it,’’ Lars Haltbrekken of Norwegian section of Friends of the Earth, a global NGO, told IPS. ‘’We hope that other countries follow this lead to do something to stop global emissions.’’

Yet there has been a little room for optimism on the other central concerns that the conference has on its agenda in order to reverse the rapidly warming planet, due to the high emission of GhGs, of which the U.S. is the worst violator, responsible for nearly 30 percent of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Urgent commitments for mitigation to reduce the GhGs are one of the main issues at the Bali meeting that will serve as marker to gauge its success. Also in the picture are commitments for a global fund for vulnerable communities in the developing world to adapt to the changing environment and for the industrial world to help the Global South with green-friendly technologies.

According to Yvo de Boer, head of the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat, the bill to fight climate change requires investments of up to 200 billion dollars annually by 2030. ‘’It sounds like a lot, but if you look at global GDP (gross domestic product) figures, it is not.’’