Climate Change Weasels

Dec 12, 2012 Editorial

If the world needed any further proof that Climate Change was destroying our ecosystem after Hurricane Sandy, it was provided by the news that a Russian tanker had delivered oil from Europe to Japan through the Arctic Ocean. This highlights the massive melting of that icecap which is sure to lead to a dramatic rise in sea-levels. Our coastland, historically three-feet below sea level, will experience massive pressures in the next decade.
But after two weeks (and an extra day), the 18th session of the Conference of Parties (COP18) to UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) at Doha, came out with an agreement to deal with Climate Change that at best can be called “depressing”. After an all-nighter, just as with CoP 17, the US still refused to budge on the issue of “equity”, which is enshrined in the UN Convention, towards the creation of an effective new Doha Gateway from the Durban Platform.
There was absolutely no consensus of any of the three issues facing CoP 18: the second period of commitment under the Kyoto Protocol, issues of loss and damage, finance and commitment to mid-term finance by developed countries. On the critical need for binding commitments to reduce emissions, the U.S. which was not part of the Kyoto Protocol, is now refusing to be part of a new regime which will come into force post-2020.
The second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol (to 2020) has been agreed upon, though, with weak targets and loopholes – there are no firm commitments to take on deeper emission cuts. And with Canada, Japan, New Zealand, Russia and the US opting out of the Kyoto Protocol, the protocol applies to only 15 percent of current global greenhouse gas emissions.
The US has not put any meaningful emission reductions on the table. While the agreement states that efforts will be taken on the ‘basis of equity and common but differentiated responsibilities and respected capabilities’ – key demands of the poorer countries, the principle of “equity” had already been degutted.
For the US, the issue of equity in the allocation of responsibility towards the problem and action based on this contribution has been a red line. The US delegation made its complete aversion to any mention of “equity” or “historical emissions” so clear that it has amounted to open blackmail. Due to pressure from the US, at the Copenhagen Climate Change conference in 2009, these words were erased from the document. Therefore, in the Durban Platform negotiations, which will now work to build agreement for emission reductions post-2020, the word “equity” has not been used. Instead, action will be “under the climate convention”, which in turn is embedded within the framework of equity.
Doha also agreed, importantly for countries such as Guyana, to include the principle of ‘loss and damage’ — that is, estimating the economic and livelihood cost of the growing impact of climate change on the most vulnerable. This is crucial since extreme weather events are devastating economies. It was also agreed that there is a relationship between extreme weather events and slow onset events — the variable rains that lead to droughts, for instance. This was the key demand of island nations and least developed countries. They wanted a mechanism to estimate and compensate for these damages.
On the issue of adaptation finance, of even greater interest to Guyana, even the US$30 billion agreed in 2009 to be raised by the developed nations were questioned. The US$100 billion annually agreed as a base necessary finance needed to fund adaptation has been reduced to US$60 billion. But even though there have been some individual pledges from some countries, even this is problematical. The REDD+ fund that would have further compensated us for our forest carbon sequestration is now up in the air.
Kuomi Naidöo, international executive director of Greenpeace said, “The United States is probably going to spend $60 billion on damage to New Jersey alone after superstorm Sandy and it spends an equal amount if not more on its marching bands in the military.”

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