IT IS abundantly clear from the bickering in Bangkok last week that the latest round of climate talks will not lead to the adoption of a comprehensive agreement at the United Nations climate change summit in Durban next December. The United States and several other developed countries are seeking a deal that would simply build on the “incremental progress” achieved at last year’s conference in Cancún, whereas the developing world wants firm commitments that their richer cousins will make substantial cuts in greenhouse gas emissions under a successor to the Kyoto Protocol. The resulting Mexican stand-off has been, and will continue to be, at the core of these tortuous negotiations in the run-up to Durban and beyond.
One of the most significant aspects of the Cancún agreement was that, for the first time, governments of both developed and developing countries recognised that deep cuts in global emissions “are required . . . so as to hold the increase in global average temperatures below two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels”. How this is to be translated into reality is the fundamental question that faces not only the 194 parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, but humanity in general. Even US negotiator Jonathan Pershing conceded that current pledges to cut emissions fall “wildly short” of what would be needed if there is to be any chance of achieving the declared objective.
Aggregate reductions amounting to 6.6 billion tonnes are on the table, less than half of the 14 billion tonnes identified as necessary by the UN Environment Programme between now and 2020 if “tipping points” are to be avoided; the difference between these figures has become known as the “gigatonne gap”. And remarkably, the countries doing most to help bridge it are in the developing world, with 3.6 billion tonnes in cuts on offer – significantly more than what developed countries have pledged, even though they bear historical responsibility for the build-up of carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere. Their three billion tonnes also includes over one billion in offsets for actions taken in developing countries, such as helping to protect tropical rain forests.
Nobody knows whether all, or any, of this will actually happen. The US, which has pledged a modest 17 per cent cut by 2020 relative to 2005, still has no climate change legislation and does not see the need for a binding international treaty. The only treaty that exists, the Kyoto Protocol, is due to run out at the end of 2012 with no extension or replacement in prospect. Next year, coincidentally, will also mark the 20th anniversary of the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, at which world leaders adopted the climate change convention “to stabilise greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system.”
Clearly, this objective has not been realised. Whatever individual countries do, there is an urgent need to reach a global consensus on how we all proceed, preferably by negotiating a new international treaty modelled on the architecture of Kyoto. Time is not on our side, however.