Kanbawza Win

Environment ministers and officials are meeting at a UN Conference in Copenhagen in Dec 7 for the UN Climate Conference to thrash out a successor of the Kyoto Protocol of a global deal on climate change.  The talks are the latest in an annual series of UN meetings that trace their origins to the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio aimed at coordinating international action against climate change. One hundred and ninety-two countries including Burma have signed the climate change convention. More than 15,000 officials, advisers, diplomats, campaigners and journalists are expected to attend COP15, joined by heads of state and government. COP15 is the official name of the Copenhagen climate change summit — the 15th Conference of the Parties (COP) under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The COP is the highest body of the UNFCCC and consists of environment ministers who meet once a year to discuss developments in the convention.

Developing countries, including China and India, believe it is the responsibility of wealthy industrialized nations such as the UK and US to set a clear example on cutting carbon emissions. Significantly, the US rejected the 1997 Kyoto protocol, with George Bush arguing that the 5% reductions required by Kyoto would “wreck the American economy” while making no demands on emerging economies. COP15’s chances of success have been improved by President Barack Obama’s stated intention to achieve an 80% reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. In April, the secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, acknowledged the role the US had played in past climate emissions at a gathering of officials from the world’s 17 largest economies. She said the US was “determined to make up for lost time both at home and abroad”. “The US is no longer absent without leave,” she said. However, Denmark’s minister for climate and energy, Connie Hedegaard, has warned that American leadership on climate change will be undermined if the Obama administration does not pass laws swiftly to reduce carbon pollution.

The goal is that the delegates  will try to agree a new climate treaty as a successor to the Kyoto protocol, due to expires in 2012. According to Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the UNFCCC, the four essentials needing an international agreement in Copenhagen are:

(1)                          How much are industrialized countries willing to reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases?

(2)                           How much are major developing countries such as China and India willing to do to limit the growth of their emissions?

(3)                           How is the help needed by developing countries to engage in reducing their emissions and adapting to the impacts of climate change going to be financed?

(4)                           How is that money going to be managed?

The main issue is that of “burden-sharing”. Climate scientists say that the world must stop the growth in greenhouse gas emissions and start making them fall from around 2015 to 2020. By 2050 they estimate the world must cut its emissions by 80% compared with 1990 levels to limit global warming to a 2C average rise. Money is a major issue. The developing countries know they must hand over hundreds of billions of pounds to poorer nations, to help them adapt to the likely consequences. Earlier this year, Gordon Brown said this climate funding needed to reach $100bn a year by 2020. If the recent recession has made rich countries less willing to part with their cash, this could raise tensions in Copenhagen. But which countries must make the cuts and by how large should they be? For example, the rapidly growing Chinese economy has recently overtaken America as the world’s largest emitter of carbon dioxide. Yet America has historically emitted far more emissions than China, and on a per capita basis Chinese emissions are around a quarter of those of the US.

The Chinese government argues that it has a moral right to develop and grow its economy — carbon emissions will inevitably grow with it. There is also the issue of industrialized nations effectively outsourcing carbon emissions to developing nations such as China. This is a consequence of huge quantities of carbon-intensive manufacturing taking place in China on behalf of buyers in the west. It wants consumer countries to take responsibility for the carbon emissions generated in the manufacture of goods, not the producer countries that export them.

Problems such as these have cast doubts on whether COP15 can succeed. There are also concerns about whether any action we take now to prevent climate change may be too little too late. A Guardian poll revealed almost nine out of 10 climate scientists do not believe political efforts to restrict global warming to an additional 2C — the level the EU defines as “dangerous” — will succeed. If the world fails to deliver a political agreement at the UN climate conference in December, it will be “the whole global democratic system not being able to deliver results in one of the defining challenges of our century”, says incoming COP15 president, Connie Hedegaard. She calls Copenhagen a “window of opportunity” which should not be missed, arguing that it may take years to rebuild the momentum.

In Most of the analyst says that it is too little too late and the world is heading for Armageddon and by the end of 21century it will be no so much a place to live in because of the political leader’s greed. The political leaders of the world will make promises for another 20 or more but by then they would no longer be in their positions and so it is an empty promise even if they agreed on it to save the planet earth. Besides who is there to see to it that the country implement or not with the promises they have made in Kobenhavn Conference in Dec.

Climate Change