Kyoto pact rift threatens progress at U.N. climate talks
Reuters, 5 April 2011, David Fogarty
http://af.reuters.com/article/commoditiesNews/idAFL3E7F520320110405
Poorer nations upped the ante on rich countries at U.N. climate talks on Tuesday by demanding that the world's main climate treaty be extended from 2013 and for industrialised countries to deepen carbon-cutting pledges.
Failure to do risked scuttling drawn-out and often fraught negotiations on ways to slow the growth of planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions and avoid greater extremes of weather and rising sea levels.
The talks in Bangkok formally began on Tuesday and are the first major session after talks last December in the Mexican resort of Cancun ended with a series of agreements on a $100 billion climate fund and other steps, such as a scheme to transfer clean technology for poorer nations.
But Cancun put off the tougher issue over the fate of the Kyoto Protocol, which binds nearly 40 industrialised nations to emissions targets during its 2008-12 first phase.
The April 3-8 Bangkok meeting is meant to expand on the Cancun agreements but arguments over Kyoto's future risk overshadowing progress.
"It is essential to find a way forward on this issue, which is particularly pressing given the growing possibility of a gap after 2012," U.N. climate chief Christiana Figueres told delegates.
The tiny Pacific island state of Tuvalu, which faces being wiped off the map by rising seas, urged the meeting to focus solely on the future of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol.
"We are concerned that we are going around in circles and making no progress. We are concerned that we have no guarantee that there will be a Kyoto Protocol at the end of this year," Tuvalu delegate Ian Fry told the gathering.
He urged nations that did not support an extension of Kyoto to leave the room, triggering applause.
Japan, Canada and Russia say they are opposed to extending the pact from 2013, saying all major emitting nations be brought under a new and broader legally binding agreement. This includes the United States which never ratified Kyoto and says it will never join it.
ONLY LEGAL PACT
Developing nations say Kyoto is the only legally binding instrument and rich nations must boost their pledges to help the world stay below an average rise of 2 Celsius, a pledge nations agreed to in Cancun.
Under Kyoto, developing nations only have to take voluntary steps to curb emissions growth from industry. They are firmly opposed to taking any targets and say they must let their economies grow to lift millions out of poverty.
Impatience is growing during the talks, which began with a series of informal workshops on Sunday, with poorer nations pointing to the increasing impact of climate change, such as storms, droughts and crop failures.
The Cancun meeting put off a decision on Kyoto until a major meeting at the end of this year in Durban, South Africa.
But the United Nations fears no decision will be taken on the shape of a new pact at those talks, almost certainly leading to a gap between the end of Kyoto's first phase at end-2012 and any future agreement.
This is a major worry for investors because there will be no certainty on how a $20 billion carbon market under the Kyoto Protocol would function. The market also underpins billions in investments in clean energy projects in poorer nations.
Australia, on behalf of an umbrella group of nations including Japan, Russia and Canada, said group members were "all committed to be part of a balanced, environmentally effective and comprehensive global deal".
But Dessima Williams of Grenada, speaking on behalf of a 43-member alliance of small island states, said it was time for rich nations to show if they had the appetite to deepen their emission cut pledges.
The United Nations says the pledges on the table are far below what is needed to have a medium chance of avoiding a 2C rise.
Wolfensohn, UN Warn Millennium Goals Won’t Be Met Without LDCs
Forbes, 4 April 2011, Chris Barth
http://blogs.forbes.com/chrisbarth/2011/04/04/wolfensohn-un-warn-millennium-goals-wont-be-met-without-ldcs/
“No MDGs without LDCs” — No Millennium Development Goals without Least Developed Countries. That is the rallying cry of the United Nations’ Eminent Persons Group report on the world’s least developed nations, titled “Compact for Inclusive Growth and Prosperity.” The Millennium Development Goals are a set of eight global poverty initiatives ratified by all 192 UN member states; the organization hopes to reach the goals by 2015.
The Eminent Persons Group, co-chaired by former World Bank President James Wolfensohn and former Malian president Alpha Oumar Konare, declared last week that without investment in the globe’s 49 least developed countries, and without the participation of the countries themselves in that development, those goals will not be met.
The 48 LDCs are home to over 800 million people, many of whom live in utter poverty. According to a statement by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, “The purpose of the Group was to build on the lessons of the past decade’s international support for the LDCs, and to recommend a new generation of policy measures in the areas of aid, trade, foreign direct investment, technology transfer, debt relief and adaptation to and mitigation of climate change.”
When I spoke with Wolfensohn in January, he identified the alleviation of poverty as the most pressing concern not only for the Least Developing Countries, but also for the developed world.
“I think that the rich world should regard it not just as charity, but as enlightened self-interest, to bring along the billions of people in poverty so that you have a more stable world,” he told me. “I have talked about that for a long time, but it’s not an easy subject to sell when there is economic hardship, at some level, in the rich world. The result is that you find that issues of foreign aid and working with developing countries become much less important to the rich countries. That may work short term, but long term I think it’s a very bad strategic mistake.”
The UN report highlights the ability for LDCs to become a big part of the global economy, provided the proper investment – particularly aid targeting infrastructural weaknesses – by developed nations. It calls for members of the Development Assistance Committee — which is made up of 23 members states and the European Commission — to provide development assistance at a rate of 0.15% of Gross National Income by 2013, and 0.2% of GNI by 2015. The report identifies a number of potential areas of development with potential for high returns on investment.
As a group, LDCs account for a significant share of world’s strategic minerals waiting to be tapped. They possess reserves of oil, gas, coal, gold, silver, diamonds, bauxite, cobalt, uranium, coltan and many more. They have vast arable land for agriculture, large rainforests that play a crucial role in combating global warming, great biodiversity, abundant renewable energy resources, enormous reserves of fresh water and precious marine and coastal resources. Equitably harnessed and properly managed, all these resources can yield high-returns on investments for the benefit of the LDCs and the global economy.
The report also outlines the need for LDCs to play a major role in their own development, rather than relying on outside support. That idea echoes what Wolfensohn said when he sat down with Steve Forbes in January.
“What was essential, in the starting point, was that those countries not be run by bureaucrats from the World Bank or the United Nations, but that they be run by locals, and that you reward the locals that are doing the best work,” he told Forbes, speaking about development projects he undertook while at the World Bank.
“If they’re not doing good work, you withdraw the money. We had to take a very different view in relation to Africa. There’s a humanitarian element to try and keep people alive. But in terms of the really big monies that were going in, there was evidence that there was waste and there was corruption, and that a lot of the projects were not working. So moving it to the fields and having them take responsibility, and really monitoring that, was something that I think was working pretty well.”
“It’s going to be a long road,” Wolfensohn told Forbes.
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