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Inaction Towards Climate Change:
Complicating Our Future and Threatening Our
Existence
By Curtis Doebbler
Al-Jazeerah, CCUN, June 27, 2011
Climate change is widely
acknowledged to be the greatest threat facing humanity. It will lead to
small island States disappearing from the face of the earth, serious global
threats to our food and water supplies, and ultimately to the death of
hundreds of millions of the poorest people in the world over the rest of
this century. No other threat—including war, nuclear disasters,
rogue regimes, terrorism, or the fiscal irresponsibility of governments—is
reliably predicted to cause so much harm to so many people on earth and
indeed to the earth itself. The International Panel on Climate Change, which
won the Nobel Prize for its evaluation of thousands of research studies to
provide us accurate information on climate change, has predicted that under
the current scenario of 'business-as-usual' temperatures could rise by as
much as 10 degrees Celsius in some parts of the world. This would have
horrendous consequences for the most vulnerable people in the world.
Consequences that the past spokesman of 136 developing countries, Lumumba
Diaping, described as the equivalent of sending hundreds of millions to
Africans to the furnaces. Yet for more than two decades States' have
failed to take adequate action to either prevent climate change or to deal
with its consequences. A major reason for this is that many wealthy
industrialized countries view climate change as an inconvenience or even a
potential market condition from which they can profit at the expense of
developing countries. Indeed, history has shown them that because of their
significantly higher levels of population they have grown rich and been able
to enslave, exploit and marginalize their neighbours in developing
countries. Still government representatives, led by the United
States and other developed countries, continue to stand in the way of even
the most basic action. They are blocking legally-binding minimally adequate
emissions limits with the result that temperatures rises are inevitable
cause deadly harm to people in many developing countries and eventually
destroy the planet. Ironically, these same rich countries are calling for
developing countries to carry the greatest burden of cutting emissions. If
developing countries were to shoulder this burden this would lead to an even
greater difference in living standards between the world's richest and the
poorest. But it is unlikely they could even do so if they wanted to carry
such a disproportional burden. The reason is that they have neither
the technology that is needed to cut emission without literally killing
their people and the richest countries and private entities therein that
have the technology are not willing to share it. As if to rub salt into the
wounds of the developing countries facing the inevitability of climate
destruction, the developed countries are also refusing to provided even a
fraction of the estimated resources needed to carry this burden and a the
same time protect their people. It is true that the resources needed
to stop the planet from overheating and protect people from the climate
change that we can already not prevent is not a small sum of money.
According to the World Bank it is as much as 750 billion US dollars a year
at 2009 rates—today over a trillion US dollars in light of the collapsing US
dollar. To date developed countries have made a top offer of 30 billion now
and 100 billion by 2020. In fact they have put more effort into mysteriously
revising the World Bank figure downwards while the costs of the actions
needed have risen and the damage already done has increased. Still, despite
offering too little and fiddling the books to decrease the amount that they
need to offer, developing countries have disbursed less than one percent of
even their inadequate pledges. It would seem to be a classic case of
the rich just not caring about the poor. Indeed, they don't seem to need to
care. Developed countries seem to have such disproportionate financial
resources advantages that they can even purchase the support of developing
countries. The tiny island archipelago of Maldives, which will already most
certainly disappear because of the rising seas levels caused by climate
change, has, for example, given up on trying to take adequate action on
climate change. Instead it frequently supports the proposals of developed
countries to take inadequate action. In 2009, its President publicly
declared at the annual climate talks that he could agree to nothing better
than a deal that would lead to his country disappearing under the sea.
Whether the words were his or actually those of developed countries is
unclear as his speaking points are sometimes written by advisors who are
paid and made available to the Maldives by rich developed countries.
Increasingly, however, it is getting harder for developed countries to
ignore the 'ticking clock' of climate change that has already condemned many
people in the Global South to lives of misery. The year 2010 was a stark
reminder when average global temperatures reached their highest level ever
and natural disasters became regular occurrences. Another Year of
Talking While Our Planet Dies Nevertheless, while our atmosphere is
literally burning up around us, our representatives talk, but take no
effective action. The recently climate talks in Bonn, Germany that
ended this past Friday were supposed to lay the ground work for an agreement
on adequate international action at the next major round of global talks in
Durban South Africa from 28 November to 9 December 2011. In Durban,
ministers and heads of States and governments will come together to decide
whether action can be taken to ensure we cut our global emissions of
greenhouse gases. If they don't agree to extend and increase their
obligations to cut emission the Kyoto Protocol to the UN Framework
Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the obligations for States to take
the action that is needed most urgently to combat the climate change will
end in 2012. In Bonn, developed countries stood obstinately against
extending these emission limits. The United States, which is the only major
emitting country that never joined the Kyoto Protocol, as well as Canada and
Japan, stated publicly that they will not agree to extend the Kyoto Protocol
even before the latest round of meetings began. These developed States took
this stance despite that fact that almost all other States want to extend
and strengthen the emission limits in the Kyoto Protocol. They just did not
seem to care. At a briefing for US NGO's the US chief negotiator in
Bonn, Jonathan Perishing, offered incredible excuses for his countries
intransience. They ranged from domestic law to excuses cowered in the
language of the long discredited climate skeptics. The biggest problem,
however, was perhaps that neither he nor his significant number of
colleagues seemed to care. In typical American fashion he concluded that it
was about image and how the US gets its message across, rather than the fact
that the consequences of its message are likely to be deadly for hundreds of
millions of the most vulnerable people in the world. For the Americans and
some of their allies the lack of progress was to be viewed with
satisfaction. Indeed, some incremental progress was made, a few
brackets were removed, a few words were agreed upon, but in the end just as
much was left to disagreement as before the meetings. Moreover, on the most
important issues States seemed even farther apart than when they started the
negotiations. They were so far apart, that just like in meetings that took
place in Bangkok last year, they spent almost half their time discussing the
agenda. The tedious nature of the negotiations seemed to miss the
point that few countries had the courage or vision to mention. It was left
to the Permanent Secretary of the small Solomon Islands' Ministry of
Environment to remind delegates in the final meeting that they needed to act
quickly because climate change is likely the greatest threat to the planet
and human survival. But after a short ovation, as if to recognize the
intrinsic wisdom of the words, delegates returned to the squabbling over
details that has lasted almost two decades. As delegates filtered
out of the room and even the Executive Secretary of the UNFCCC Costa Rican
Christina Figueres could be seen walking hastily from the hall, a few of the
almost silenced voices of civil society were given the opportunity to echo
the call for urgent action. These NGOs pleaded for action and assessed the
proceedings as providing much too little, much too late. These
voices often emphasized the enhanced obligations of developed States under
the international law. These obligations, as stated in UN Framework
Convention on Climate Change that has been ratified by 194 States, include
the principle of ‘common but differentiated responsibilities’ whereby an
enhance burden is placed on developed countries to do more to protect the
climate. In Bonn this principle seemed to fall on deaf ears. Failure
to Act To date States have failed to take adequate action to prevent
even the worst adverse effects of climate change. This failure is most
pointedly evident in the failure of States to renew and enhance their legal
binding obligations to cut emissions of the pollutants that cause climate
change. Even States, such as Canada and Japan, who are party to the
Kyoto Protocol have stated their clear intention of violating that treaty.
They have done so by publicly declaring their intention not to extend its
emission limits, despite the fact that article 3, paragraph 9, unambiguously
requires the States party to the Kyoto Protocol to establish new limits
after 2012 when the current limits expire. In fact most of the
States with obligations under the Kyoto Protocol have no cut their emissions
even by the modest and widely acknowledged inadequate requirements of that
treaty. Many States will increase their overall emission, but will be able
to cloak their deficient action by buying the right to pollute from poorer
States who do not have the capacity to pollute as much. This system of
‘carbon trading’ is allowing more pollution instead of achieving the goal of
the UN Framework Convention on Climate Changes, which is to prevent the
accumulation of dangerous levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and
thus curb the acceleration of climate change caused by human beings.
In other words, States are allowed to buy the right to pollute from poorer
States. It is akin to the license to kill sold by poorer States struggling
to achieve minimal development. The tragic irony of this system is that it
keeps the world’s wealth and development in the richer developed States,
while the people who will suffer the most from the adverse impacts of
climate change are found in the poorer developing States. Again in
Bonn the majority of developing States either refused to abide by their
legal obligation to extend the Kyoto Protocol’s emission limits or
affirmatively stated that they had no intention to do so. A minority
of these States, mainly European, did reiterate their willingness to extend
the emission limits in the Kyoto Protocol, but they did not move much closer
to actually doing so. Instead they conditioned their promise to do something
that they are already legally obliged to do on concessions from developing
countries to a new regime. Even when China agreed to cuts its
emission by 45% and India by 20% to 25%, something they have no legal
obligation to do, the developing States refused to commit to an
unconditional extension of strengthened emission limits in the Kyoto
Protocol. The consequence is that the developed States that pollute
the most can continue to do so and again have failed to take adequate action
to control or mitigate climate change. Failure to Pay The
failure of developed States to act has been complimented and its adverse
impacts intensified by their failure to pay for adaptation or the action
that is needed by poorer, developing States that will be more affected.
These States need resources to protect their people against climate change.
It sometimes means money, but also merely that developed States and private
industry therein will allow developing States to exploit the technology that
is currently denied to them by an onerous system of intellectual property
that disproportionately favours wealthy countries, companies, and
individuals. Recently, the World Bank, in most well documented
estimated, that it has since been forced to revise for unclear reasons,
estimated that between 500 and 750 billion US dollars a year is needed to
cope with climate change. Despite the calculations of this institution which
is controlled by rich developed countries, these same countries have only
offered 30 billion US dollar in the short term in “Fast Start” financing and
a maximum of 100 billion US dollars per year by 2020. As if to add
insult to the injury that will accrue from these miserly offerings of
assistance, even this aid, which is must be “new and additional,” has not
materialized. Bloomberg News Agency reported during the climate talks in
Bonn that only about 5% of the amount promised by States had actually
materialized. Even if the amount is somewhat more, the de minimus nature of
the highest amount offered almost makes the exercise of arguing over the
pledges meaningless. What is clear, however, is that developing
States again have failed on climate change by being unwilling even to invest
this small amount of money. A Total Disaster The failure of
States is further exacerbated by the effort of developing States to prevent
even loosely related action that may force them to take adequate action on
climate change. There have been several recent example of action by
developed States to remove from the agenda of the UN Human Rights Council
issues that could weaken their positions in climate talks. In the March
meeting of the Council Switzerland convinced the tiny Maldives Islands who
are struggling to save their people as their island will most certainly
disappear into the sea to put forward what looked like a harmless resolution
on the environment. The effect of the resolution, as a Swiss diplomat
explained, was to turn back the clock on the action being taken by the Human
Rights Council on climate change. The British advisor to the Maldives
further explained that climate change should not be on the agenda of the
Council. Indeed, if it were than the human consequences of climate change
would become more apparent and saving a few dollars instead of hundreds of
millions of Africans lives might be less tolerated. More recently,
Norway brought together Nigeria, Argentina (coordinator of the Group of 77,
which in fact represents 136 developing countries) to get them to push for
ending the Human Rights Council’s mandate on Human Rights and Transnational
Corporations and Business. Norway was well aware that their last minute
effort would prevent a mandate holder from being in place to raise the issue
of the important contributions of private enterprise to climate change at
the Durban meeting. In fact, the Norwegian-led move that came after a
recommendation for the appointment of a Special Representative of the
Secretary-General had already been made by Ambassadors from all five
regional groups seemed mainly intended to again obscure the adverse human
consequences of climate change that are caused by the developed States.
As climate change affects people in almost every part of the world, it is
not surprising that States have devised strategies to confront it in
numerous different forums. Especially, rich developed countries appear
increasingly embarrassed by their legacy of polluting our planet. They have
however, chosen to deal with this guilt not by action, but by conscious
inaction. It would appear as if they believe that they can bury the past and
the present under the very ground that we commonly share. They may not have
calculated, however, how dangerous such narrow-minded thinking may be for
all of us.
Dr. Doebbler is a well-known international lawyer and
professor at Webster University and the Geneva School of Diplomacy and
International Relations in Geneva Switzerland. He is a frequent commentator
on events in the Middle East in particularly and on international affairs
more generally. He is also the UN representative of Nord-Sud XXI and the
President of the NGO International-Lawyers.Org.
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