Cut
GhGs Or Face
Extreme Events - Scientists
By Imelda Abano
07 December, 2007
Inter
Press Service
NUSA
DUA, Bali, Dec 7 (IPS) - Scientists attending a major United
Nations conference on climate change on this Indonesian resort island
warn that unless greenhouse gas (GhG) emissions are contained extreme
geo-climatic events are only expectable.
Some 200
climatologists and scientific experts gathered for the 11-day conference,
that began Monday under the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change
(UNFCCC), have issued a ‘Bali Declaration’ that urges negotiators
from 180 nations to agree to reduce GhG emissions to 50 percent of 1990
levels by the year 2050.
Global emissions
of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other GhGs need to decline over the next
10-15 years if heat waves, droughts, floods and storms are not to intensify,
said the scientists in the declaration sponsored by the Climate Change
Research Centre at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia.
At risk,
the declaration issued Thursday said, are coastal settlements, urban
conglomerations and ecosystems with several plant and animal species
facing serious danger of extinction in a business-as-usual scenario.
One of the
signatories, Prof. Richard Sommerville of the Scripps Institution of
Oceanography, San Diego, United States, told IPS: "Climate change
is real and there is no time to lose. All nations have the responsibility
to act now before Kyoto (Protocol) expires in 2012.’’
Sommerville
said the scientists’ group had no suggestions to offer at the
Bali negotiations beyond what was contained in the declaration, the
thrust of which was that the outcome of this conference should work
to stop and reverse global warming.
"Climate
science continues to say that environmental changes are occurring faster
than even the best climate models have projected. Negotiations, here
in Bali, must start the process of reaching a new global agreement that
sets strong binding targets and includes the vast majority of the nations
of the world," Sommerville stressed.
"Urgent
international action must be taken in Bali considering the extreme weather-related
disasters events are already happening in developing as well as industrialised
countries," Sommerville added.
Environmental
activists that IPS spoke with said they hoped Bali will deliver a general
agreement to cut emissions substantially by 2050.
"We
urge all governments to support negotiations on a post-Kyoto agreement
for a stronger climate regime to further reduce their emissions by 80
percent by 2050," said Ramon Faustino Sales, convenor of the Philippines
Network on Climate Change (PNCC), an alliance of non-government organisations
(NGOs) that deals with advocacy on climate change and sustainable development
issues.
UNFCCC executive
secretary Yvo de Boer said he is optimistic that the Bali summit leaders
would produce a mechanism to establish new commitment to the Kyoto agreement.
"Parties need to create the 'tool box' that can reduce emissions
cost-effectively and enable economic growth. The final step of the two-year
negotiating process will be to define targets and the type of legal
instruments that is needed to make the new international deal work,"
he told reporters.
De Boer expected
the conference to make a proposed adaptation fund operational, "so
that perhaps in as little as a year, real resources for adaptation can
begin to flow to developing countries’’. ’The fund
is expected to finance climate change projects ranging from building
sea walls to guard against surging oceans and improved water supply
to drought-hit areas to training in new agricultural techniques.
The adaptation
fund is based on a two percent levy on the Kyoto Protocol's clean development
mechanism (CDM) projects. By 2012, when the protocol comes to an end,
the fund could grow to around 300 million US dollars per year.
Drawing upwards
of 10,000 participants, the conference covers four core issues; ways
to reach a consensus on climate adaptation, mitigation to curb sources
of GhG emissions, transfer of technology from developed to developing
countries and a financing scheme to curb the impacts of climate change.
In order
to encourage processes, host Indonesia has set up meetings for trade
ministers on Dec. 8-9 and finance ministers on Dec. 10-11, before environment
ministers hold a wrap up session on Dec.12-14.
Its best
possible outcome would be a ‘Bali Roadmap,’ an action plan
for an agreement by 2009 that would include more countries making commitments
to cut emissions and broaden the scope of the Kyoto Protocol to include
emissions from deforestation, said Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, chairwoman
of the U.N. Working Group on Indigenous People.
And the worst
possible outcome? That, according to Hans Verolme, climate change director
with the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) -- which is pushing 30 percent reduction
target by 2020 -- would include the negotiations coming up with yet
another ‘’vague statement acknowledging the problem, but
offering no concrete plan’’.
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