...as review of Doha round of climate talks begins
Friends of the Earth (FOE) Ghana has indicted industrialised
countries for lacking political will to move forward global efforts at
curtailing spiralling climatic conditions.
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| Big users of fossils have declined to take on more emissions cut |
According to Mr George Awudi, Climate Change Programme
Coordinator at FOE-Ghana, the actions of nations like Canada, Japan, New
Zealand and Russia coupled with the failure of most industrialised countries to
meet the budget for climate change interventions in developing countries
manifests a lack of political will to address impacts of climate change for
which developed countries are historically responsible.
Up to US$100 billion is required each year by 2020 to
finance the climate budget but only a total of six (6) billon dollars worth of
pledges were garnered from Germany, the United Kingdom, France, Denmark, Sweden
and the European Union Commission for the period up to 2015.
This coupled with a failure to pledge emission cuts that can
keep temperature rise below 2 degrees Celsius globally leads FOE-Ghana to
question the commitment levels of ‘big boy’ nations.
“I am sad to inform you that there was a huge lack of
political will on the part of the industrialised countries in Doha to ensure that
we achieve a step in those directions on how to reduce emissions of Greenhouse Gases
[GHGs] and how to provide adequate financial resources to developing countries
to address the impact that their [developed nations] activities have brought to
developing countries,” Mr Awudi recently told selected journalists from print
and radio houses whom he engaged at a COP18 debriefing session for the media.
Two key issues were at the heart of discussions on both
technical and political negotiations of the the 18th Conference of Parties (COP) to the UN Framework
Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) which ended last December in the
Qatari capital city of Doha.
The first issue was the reduction in concentration of GHGs
in the atmosphere in a time frame that will allow atmospheric concentrations of
the GHGs to stabilise in order to avoid dangerous climate change. The second
issue was the provision of adequate, new and additional climate finance to
developing countries by industrialised countries to address the impacts of
climate change.
Many of the concerns raised by FOE-Ghana were shared by
other African Civil Society
Organizations and Networks under the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance
(PACJA) when they from 12-13th February 2013 in Nairobi, Kenya and took
stock of the COP18 and reviewed strategies for further work.
In a declaration issued at the close of their meeting, the
organisations lamented that the last
two decades have been characterised by unfulfilled promises and commitments by
developed countries to Africa in particular hence breeding an atmosphere of
ever-diminishing trust and confidence in international negotiations processes.
They then condemned
the withdrawal of Canada, New Zealand, Russia and Japan from the second
commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol (KP2) and the continued refusal of
United States to ratify the protocol. “We call on these countries to accept
their historical responsibilities, reconsider their position and recommit
without further delay and conditions,” they said.
In Doha, Russia, New Zealand and Japan refused to take
targets in a second commitment period for the Kyoto Protocol while Canada
joined the United States on the list of countries which have refused to join
the Protocol.
The organisations
also urged that developed countries should honour and deliver on their pledge
of providing US$100 billion every year until 2020. “Further, they must scale up
their pledges to fulfil their obligation to provide adequate, new and
additional funds as this amount is far from all estimates of climate finance
needed by developing countries.
“We ask the COP to
establish a clear and transparent mechanism for monitoring, verification, and
evaluation of delivery of climate funds. We also ask for enhancing participation
of CSOs in climate finance boards.”
Furthermore, they
demanded that developed countries “must compensate Africa for the full costs of
avoiding harms, actual harms and damage, and lost opportunities for our
development resulting from climate change.”
They also
emphasised their opposition to any effort to establish adaptation as an
obligation and not a right, or to use adaptation as a means to divide or
differentiate between developing countries. “Therefore, we demand for the
establishment of an international mechanism for compensation on the loss and
damage caused by extreme weather events related to climate change.”
In the course of the
Doha talks, developed countries and CSOs clashed over ‘fast start
finance’ when developed nations claimed they had delivered in excess of the $30
billion “fast start finance” they pledged to give to developing countries.
Australia, Canada, Japan, Liechtenstein, New Zealand,
Norway, Switzerland, USA and EU reportedly announced at a fast start finance
side event on November 27 2012 that they had successfully delivered the pledged
US$30 billion and even exceeded it by US$3 billion over the period 2010 to
2012.
But representatives of civil society organisations from
Africa expressed dismay. In a counter statement, PACJA described the developed
countries’ assertion as “both inconsistent with the principles on which the
Fast Start Finance was to be delivered and not supported by facts on the
ground.”
This article appeared in the Monday, March 25, 2013 "Understanding Climate Change" Column which I authored for the Public Agenda Newspaper.
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