The 18th session of the Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC and the 8th session of the Conference of the Parties serving as the Meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol opened on November 26 and continues until December 7 at the Qatar National Convention Centre in Doha, Qatar.
There is some irony in Qatar hosting the event. If you are looking for a climate change criminal, Qatar stands tall as the worst emitter of greenhouse gases per capita – though that is per capita. The real bad boys on the block are China and the United States.
Over the coming days, 17,000 officials, 7,000 NGO representatives, and 1,500 journalists will follow a process aimed at trying to work out a climate change agreement.
Whether or not the 190 countries represented at the talks will be able to hammer out a viable action plan to cut back on pollution and the heavy emissions made from fossil fuels is in doubt.
The danger is that once again, the climate change talks will result in too little and the time-frame will be too long. Scientists agreed in 2012 that global temperature increase has to be limited to less than 2 degrees Celsius in order to avoid run-away climate change that could be catastrophic.
There appears to be little chance of keeping within this limitation.
Hurricane Sandy is just one example of an extreme weather event that may have been spurred on by man-made climate change; the floods in Britain another. These are just the tip of the iceberg (pardon the pun…) of extreme weather events to come.
Al Jazeera talked with Tove Ryding, climate policy coordinator with Greenpeace International:
“There are four main issues for this whole conference. One is the legally binding agreement – the Doha amendment to the Kyoto Protocol. There is a high chance that will get adopted. All the G77 and EU are working towards having that in the outcome.
“In Copenhagen [during a COP summit in 2009]… rich countries pledged climate support to the global South for three years. They gave $30bn. That ends in 2012 and then we have no more climate finance. There is a debate about whether there will be a new number and new money on climate finance.”
Ryding said governments need to adopt a new binding agreement in 2015, and there are no plans on how they are going to do it. Negotiating some of the text for that new agreement will be on the agenda for the COP18, she said. Environmentalists hope this new text will have “a legally binding road map” so governments can be assessed annually on whether they are reducing emissions enough to meet their goal.
“As of the end of 2012, $30bn was committed by developed countries [for climate mitigation in poor countries]… I am not sure how much was actually mobilised.”
“Lastly, governments need to actually do something to reduce emissions,” she said. “We are afraid there won’t be anything concrete.”
For more, check out the Conference website.
