un climate talks: developed nations strangle hope of progress
"This week rich countries have dragged their feet on committing to the next phase of the Kyoto Protocol, which enshrines their responsibility to cut their emissions first and fastest, and tried to force developing countries to accept a weak and unfair agreement.
"This
potentially leaves the world with no legally-binding way of cutting
carbon emissions - and at grave risk of catastrophic climate change
which would endanger billions of lives.”
Joseph
Zacune, Friends of the Earth International Climate Justice and Energy
Program Co-ordinator added: "Rich industrialised countries must
immediately commit to radical binding emission reductions without
carbon offsetting. Failure to do so would make them complicit in the
slow death of the human species as a result of catastrophic climate
change."
During the
week of UNFCCC talks in Bonn, there was increasingly polarised
positioning on the Kyoto Protocol, the legal instrument which commits
rich countries to cutting their emissions first and fastest.
[1]
Rich countries, in particular the EU, have backed away
from whole-heartedly committing to the Protocol, which enshrines the
responsibility of rich countries to act first as the primary agents
of climate change, because of a perceived lack of progress in the
second strand of the negotiations, on Long-term Cooperative
Action.
The United States has had an increasingly detrimental
influence on the negotiations since Congress rejected emissions
reduction legislation earlier this year - and their negotiators are
pushing hard for a potential new climate treaty to include more of
the clauses from the Copenhagen Accord, which proposes a system of
voluntary emission reduction pledges.
Both the EU and the USA
are demanding developing countries commit to cutting their emissions
- even though, under UN treaties, they are not required to do so, and
hundreds of millions of their people still lack basic amenities like
electricity. Such a measure would, in fact, be in contravention of
the UNFCCC.
Fresh analysis undertaken by Third World network
also revealed that loopholes in the Kyoto Protocol are even more
significant that first feared. The four main loopholes in the
Protocol - Forestry accounting rules (LULUCF); international aviation
and shipping emissions; surplus emissions allowances from the former
USSR and other Eastern European countries; and 'escape hatches' like
carbon offsetting and trading - are sufficient to outweigh all the
current emissions reduction pledges on the table at the talks. Rich
countries could, in fact, actually increase their emissions.
The
issue of Measurement, Reporting and Verification (MRV) for developing
countries has also become more prominent, with rich countries pushing
for strict rules on such methods whilst simultaneously refusing to
commit to the strong emissions reductions required to tackle climate
change effectively.
FOR MORE INFORMATION
Asad Rehman, International Climate Campaigner at Friends of the Earth England, Wales and Northern Ireland: +44 77201 47280 (UK Mobile)
Joseph
Zacune, Friends of the Earth International Climate Justice and Energy
Program Co-ordinator +44 7912 406424 (UK mobile)
NOTES TO EDITORS
For a detailed assessment of this week's round of UNFCCC talks in Bonn, including a summary of the loopholes, please see the FoEE briefing at:
www.foeeurope.org/climate/download/bonn_loopholes_08_10.pdf
See also presentations made to the UNFCCC conference by Stockholm Environment Institute:
unfccc.int/files/essential_background/library/application/pdf/awg_southcentre.pdf
and Third World Network:
unfccc.int/files/kyoto_protocol/application/pdf/twn_notes.pdf
