“All countries need to do their fair share to tackle climate change. Yet rich industrialized countries which are most responsible for the climate crisis are not pulling their weight.
“It’s time for governments from Europe to the US to stand up to the fossil fuel lobbyists. Their competitors in developing countries – from China to India and Brazil – have pledged to do more to rein in emissions and start building prosperous low carbon economies. Europe and the US risk being left behind.
“In the end, cutting emissions isn’t about who does the most, but whether the total efforts are enough to avoid devastating levels of global warming – we will either sink or swim together. The pledges currently on the table mean we are sinking." Tim Gore, Oxfam’s climate change policy advisor.
Environment and youth NGO’s present the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) with The Ray of the Day award following the second day of climate talks in Bonn on Tuesday. According to CAN: "They provided a concrete proposal to move the KP negotiations forward particularly in light of the decidedly uninspiring progress elsewhere. We would like to encourage other parties or groups to follow the example AOSIS has set in being solutions oriented. As AOSIS reminded us today, we cannot afford to talk in circles when there is so much to lose."
Let's Move On
The UN Climate Negotiations in Bonn commenced yesterday -- the second meeting this year to set the stage for November 28's COP17 in Durban, South Africa -- and NGO's began turning up the heat on the official negotiators, many of whom seem lulled to complacency in what resembles a quasi-real life reenactment of Waiting for Godot.
Their message to the UN diplomats who have gathered from 183 countries? Godot is NOT coming. It is up to YOU!
According to the UNFCCC, the Bonn talks aim "to provide clarity on the architecture of the future international climate regime to reduce global emissions fast enough to avoid the worst climate change."
Delegates are working on two tracks: Annex I (industrialized) Parties, still legally bound to reduce emissions under the Kyoto Protocol - and those countries composing the Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-term Cooperative Action(AWG-LCA) under the Framework Convention on Climate Change.
The first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol expires at the end of 2012, and as of last December Canada, Russia and Japan decided to opt out of Phase 2.
As the first day of the talks concluded yesterday, negotiations remained stalemated in excrutiatingly detailed and contentious disagreements about the agenda.
Along with urgent problems on Kyoto and the Green Climate Fund, details from three recent official reports stress the urgent need to propel the UNFCCC process forward:
• The IEA special report issued last month, noting that as CO2 emissions reached a record high in 2010, limiting global temperature increases to 2ºC is unachieable, particularly given the fact that 80% of projected 2020 emissions from the power sector are already locked in;
• The Greenpeace GLOW report, which noted that industrialized nations are NOT carrying their weight in cutting GHGs and that over 60 per cent of emissions cuts by 2020 are likely to be made by developing countries;
• the emerging scientific consensus that global food security is threatened by crop failures and raising food prices, all by products of climate change.
UNFCCC executive secretary Christiana Figueres yesterday stressed the urgency for negotiations to agree on drastic cuts in GHGs.
"Governments lit a beacon in Cancun towards a low-emission world which is resilient to climate change," she said. "They committed themselves to a maximum global average temperature rise of two degrees Celsius, with further consideration of a 1.5-degree maximum. Now, more than ever, it is critical that all efforts are mobilized towards living up to this commitment."
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