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The “Conclusive” China Climate Talks

By FarooqueChowdhury

10 October, 2010
Countercurrents.org

As the focus of dealing with the climate crisis is “post-Cancún”, at COP17 in South Africa in December 2011, the China climate talks, concluded on Oct. 9, reflect nothing but the rising competition between the climate crisis giants, US and China. It is essentially a competition between the related capitals that makes the poor nations suffer. Christiana Figueres, the UN climate chief, however said that some “concrete” results have been produced in Tianjin. A draft decision text produced in the meeting will be submitted to the coming Cancun Conference.

Deadlock in the Tianjin talks between the two largest GHG emitters blaming each other actually has clouded prospects for advancements in the Cancun climate conference that carries not much hope. Cancún will find no heads of state and no binding deal will be made there. Ministers and senior officials will prepare ground for post-Cancun.

The issues in the Tianjin were as usual: monitoring and verification, and developed countries’ failure to commit to substantial carbon emission reductions while making unfair demands of developing nations. There is the unresolved great rich-poor divide. Modest progress in establishing a climate fund for the poor countries, drawing up guidelines on sharing technology and deforestation issues were the total outcomes from Tianjin.

The rich countries’ Copenhagen pledge to give $30bn over three years in climate funding to poor countries, rising to a total of $100bn annually by 2020, has materialized little. The amount is far short the demands of poorer countries for $600bn, or the World Bank's $275bn estimate of the annual cost of tackling climate crisis (C2) by 2030. Rich countries are effectively slow to launch the “fast start” climate funds. Even whatever is done is actually a diversion from the existing aid budgets.

Handing over money to the poor is always a “problem” for the rich. Market dominates their mind. Now-a-days, speculation has strengthened their market-thought process. Hence, the rich countries are pushing for a fund that will effectively promote speculative carbon markets instead of establishing a reliable stream of public funds. The rich prefer the World Bank, their loved institution, to handle the fund while the developing nations’ choice is the UN framework.

The aim before the deal makers is to secure a binding deal to curb GHG, find out a replacement for the Kyoto Protocol that expires in 2012. The binding deal, it is now clear, will be out of reach in Cancun. Now, it seems, there is a modest target: laying foundation for a legal framework that could be approved in South Africa in 2011. Although the EU negotiator hopes of “a big effort…to crystallize options ... in Cancun” and the UN climate chief was happy with progress made in Tianjin. But the EU negotiator warned: Cancún failure would make climate talks “irrelevant”.

Till then, the world has to count days with rising temperature threatening all life on the entire planet. A series of recent reports/findings tell:

1. A 2-degree-Celsius temperature rise could subject up to 2 billion people to water shortages by 2050, a U.N. panel has said.

2. The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) said: The impacts of climate change are most visible in the dramatic changes occurring to the fresh water resources. A WWF report, Flowing Forward, released recently in Stockholm made the comment. “The very language of climate change -- drought, floods, desertification, famines, tropical cyclones -- is the language of water,” said a WWF official. The report found visible water, rivers, lakes, precipitation, glaciers, snow pack, water for crops and livestock, health and sanitation services, hydroelectric and nuclear power, are all heavily influenced by climate change.

3. A University of Leeds study said: Crop failures as Russia witnessed this year are likely to become more common as climate crisis causes more extreme weather. A simulation of climate crisis effect on spring wheat in northeast China showed that in the worst case, more than 35 percent of crops may fail through 2099, compared with a baseline rate of about 13 percent.

4. The average area of glaciers in western China might shrink by about 30 percent by 2050 because of global warming, damaging crop production and worsening droughts. This warning was made in the Climate Changes and Poverty -- Case Study in China report jointly released by organizations including the Institute of Environment and Social and Sustainable Development in Agriculture with the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences. The report said: Ocean glaciers will shrink by 52.5 percent, and Asian continental glaciers by 24.4 percent, seasonal snowfall period will get reduced and melting area will be higher, ice volumes will decrease substantially and the runoff water to rivers will fall sharply. Glacier shrinkage will also threaten China's agriculture sector. The report warned that overall crop production capacity would drop by 5 percent to 10 percent by 2030 due to global warming, especially in wheat, rice and corn, and the impact would worsen after 2050.

This reality of future has not yet “encouraged” dominating capitals to refrain from competition. They are counting for post-Cancun days for “a single, definitive and all-encompassing deal” that Christiana Figueres, the executive secretary of UNFCCC, believes “is unlikely to happen in her lifetime.”

Farooque Chowdhury, a Bangladesh-free lancer, contributes on socioeconomic issues.