CLIMATE CHANGE: No Deal in Sight, Say Leading Economies of the South

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CAPE TOWN, Apr 26 2010 (IPS) - Environment ministers from Brazil, South Africa, India and China are sceptical that a legally-binding agreement on climate change will be reached in Cancun, Mexico in December.

But are "nationally appropriate mitigation actions" enough? Credit: Davison Makanga/IPS

Jairam Ramesh, Indian Minister of State for Environment and Forests said, “There is no breakthrough in sight.”

South Africa’s Minister of Water and Environmental Affairs Buyelwa Sonjica described global talks as complex. She said honest negotiations – “based on equity” – would have to be established before a satisfactory deal could be concluded.

BASIC, alongside the U.S. and the EU, helped forge the compromise Copenhagen Accord, at the U.N. Conference on Climate Change held in Denmark in December 2009. The non-binding agreement was seen as a face saver for a conference that threatened to end with no agreement at all.

The third meeting since then of the BASIC group, as these four emerging economies are known, ended on Apr. 25 with a statement of their “determination to continue to show leadership in acting on climate change.” The countries also said they will stick to the “nationally appropriate mitigation actions” each put forward in December.

Not much change to report

The basic outlines of the barrier on which climate talks in December ran aground remain in place. Developed countries are not ready to put fresh commitments on the table if the fastest growing economies of the South do not also do so. The leading polluters in the developing world remain resistant to accepting binding reductions targets.

BASIC countries insist that it is the responsibility of the developed world, whose historical and present contributions to greenhouse gas emissions are undeniably the bulk of the problem, to both reduce emissions and to make large amounts of money and technology available so that the South can develop along a low- carbon path.

The EU countries have collectively met their commitments to reduce emissions by four percent as compared to 1990 levels, but this was achieved in large measure due to the collapse of the heavily-polluting economies of Eastern European countries between 1990 and 1999.

Emissions from Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Switzerland all grew by 25 percent since 1990; Japan’s by roughly nine percent. Emissions from the U.S. – and the world’s leading polluter is not a signatory to the Kyoto Protocol – rose by 16 percent.

In the South, emissions from BASIC’s members are growing very quickly.

“BASIC countries are being pushed to take commitments,” says Mwenda. “China is emitting a lot but the per capita emissions are very low compared to U.S. and other industrialised countries.”

The emerging economies, he says, have not refused to commit themselves, they are demanding support from the developed world if they’re to build greener economies.

Climate is not conditional

Greenpeace campaigner Melita Steele rejects this logic. “We are not sure if (BASIC members) are showing a commitment to green development in their own countries or recognising the urgency of the matter. Climate change is a crisis and should be treated as such.”

She says Greenpeace calculates that renewables could supply up to 70 percent of South Africa’s energy needs by 2050, if funding was committed to developing it instead of continuing with the familiar polluting options.

“The recent $3.75 billion World Bank loan for the coal project should instead have been channeled to renewable energy.”

Bobby Peek, director of environmental organisation groundWork, sees the self-interest of transnational corporations behind the delays .”The longer we don’t get the agreement, the better for governments like the U.S., South Africa and big corporations who want to continue the status quo.”

The tragedy, Peek says, is that these corporations do not necessarily contribute significantly to the gross domestic product of developing countries like South Africa. “For instance mining giant BHP Billiton consumes 10 percent of South Africa’s power but only contributes 0.1 percent to the GDP. It’s a farce.”

Deadlock melting slower than icecap

BASIC member countries will continue to hold separate meetings to prepare the groundwork for Cancun and COP 16. The preparation will not be limited to Brazil, South Africa, India and China, it will include other, more vulnerable countries from the global South in a BASIC Plus grouping.

PACJA’s Mwenda says it is important to build regional blocs to negotiate.

“This is the way Africa gained influence at the G8,” he says. “(We are pushing to ensure that Mexico (the next U.N. climate change conference) delivers a two track outcome which is just, equitable, fair and legally binding.”

That’s one track to ensure continuation of the Kyoto Protocol and the commitments from the industrialised countries listed in its Annex I. The other track to ensure that countries such as the U.S. take on commitments under a new agreement.

The ministers meeting in Cape Town called on developed countries to make good on their Copenhagen Accord financial pledges. “The commitments to provide finance must be operationalised. Both the $30 billion (2010-2012) and the $100 billion annually (by 2020) should be provided by developed countries.”

A long-term view may be reasonable in terms of negotiators working out a deal acceptable to all parties, but the possibility of avoiding the average 2 degree rise in temperatures that the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change projects is the threshold for catastrophic climate change is slipping away.