Kumi Naidoo is not a happy man. The international executive director of Greenpeace has followed the haggling by governments at the UN Climate Change Conference in Doha over two weeks to a rocky close on Saturday.
“If we make a judgment based on what we’ve seen in these negotiations so far, there is no reason to be optimistic” about a fair, new global deal, Naidoo told AFP.
The key problem over the last two decades has been how to share responsibility for the climate change crisis.
Rather than focusing on the major threat posed by pumping billions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere every year, many delegates at the two week conference appeared more intent on not signing up for anything that would hold their countries to emission cuts.
According to a report by France 24, the developing world places the onus for financing and deep emissions cuts on rich countries which they say got where they are today by pumping the bulk of Earth-warming greenhouse gases into the atmosphere during the industrial era.
But rich countries led by the United States, which has refused to ratify the emissions-curbing Kyoto Protocol, insist on imposing a duty on poorer nations polluting heavily today as they burn coal to bolster their developing economies.
Negotiators applauded as conference chairman Abdullah bin Hamad al-Attiyah of Qatar rushed through a package of deals he called the Doha Climate Gateway on Saturday evening. But it had taken a lot of work to get this far.
The package gave a second life to the Kyoto Protocol, albeit in a watered-down form – placing binding emissions cut targets on the EU and 10 other developed countries said to be jointly responsible for about 15 percent of the world’s emissions.
Poor countries won historic recognition of the plight, obtainin a pledge from rich nations that they will receive funds to repair the “loss and damage” incurred due to climate change.
Little real progress
According to France 24, there is relief that Doha delivered some kind of a deal, many worry it has not laid down a firm enough foundation.
The package includes wording on scaling up funding from now until 2020 to help poor countries deal with global warming and convert to planet-friendlier energy sources — but does not list any figures.
It is also short on detail on stepping up urgently needed pre-2020 emissions cuts by non-Kyoto partners, which include the world’s first and fourth biggest polluters, developing nations China and India, as well as the second-placed United States.
For full details, check out the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change website.
