The poli
tical reality of climate change has yet again failed to meet the need of the hour. The latest round of climate change negotiations (COP 18) that just concluded in Doha failed to come to grips with the gravity of nature’s warning and proved to be as inconsequential as had been feared. No real commitments pledged, no real finance delivered and, most importantly, no real leadership. The momentum in the climate talks which lost its way a few years ago at Copenhagen has failed to be reignited. This year at Doha the negotiations really seemed to be desperately searching for relevance.
The timid outcome of the two-week talks was a well-rehearsed final marathon session which culminated with the COP chairman rapidly hammering through a set of decisions termed “Doha Climate Gateway.” What is strikingly obvious from this document is that the two much-needed targets of raising the ambition of the climate polluting developed countries and of honouring their oft-repeated promise of delivering adequate climate finance to developing countries both remain missing.
Outside the negotiation rooms, however, climate change has forcibly dictated its own set of rules and costs. While the last three years of climate negotiations have fought over how, when, by whom and to whom the promised figure of $100 billion in climate change finance would be delivered, Hurricane Sandy alone billed the world’s largest climate polluter, and also the most obstinate negotiator, to a figure of $100 billion in damages. That is the irony of nature’s fury.
What the Doha meeting did manage to do was extend a last-minute lifeline to the Kyoto Protocol, which would have otherwise expired at the end of 2012. The 1997 Kyoto Treaty had obliged 35 developed countries to curb their carbon emissions by an average of at least 5.2 percent below 1990 levels during the four-year period of 2008-2012. Even though the last few years saw the unceremonious exit of Russia, Japan and Canada from it, the Kyoto Protocol still survives as the only legally binding instrument in the climate arena and, backed primarily by promised deeper emission cuts from the EU and Australia, has now been extended by another elongated eight-year term.
This will allow carbon trading to further expand and use the markets to shift economic growth onto a low-carbon trajectory, particularly in developing countries where most of this growth is set to happen. The real credibility of this extension depends on the emissions targets that the developed countries voluntarily choose to take upon themselves. This essential element has been left open-ended, however, with more negotiations to happen in the coming year.
The Doha decisions have also affirmed and reiterated the need for adopting a universal climate agreement by 2015 while agreeing to recognise the mitigation actions undertaken by developing countries in a specialised registry. This does sound good, but read the small print and it effectively translates into a clampdown on the principle of “common but differentiated responsibility.” This equity principle had established the historical responsibility of climate change on the developed countries and forced them to not only take up emission commitments under the climate regime but also assist developing countries in coping with climate impacts. However, the climate talks have now slowly eroded this principle and reversed the ethical pressure onto the developing countries to become part of a universal agreement. The developing countries, which are not responsible for the global climate mess, are already prime victims of climate impacts and need emission space to support their future economic growths. They will collectively suffer the consequences of this weakening stance on the CBDR principle.
Pakistan is the strongest case in point. With less than 0.5 percent of global carbon emissions, Pakistan is considered among the top ten climate-affected countries, a prime case of global climate injustice. In the past decade, Pakistan has been in the thick of climate-triggered disasters ranging from droughts to unprecedented floods to freak monsoon activity to unpredictable cyclonic threats. It has suffered a constant financial drain due to such disasters, which is estimated at $10 billion in 2010, $7 billion in 2011 and is again running in the billions in 2012. More alarmingly, climate modelling research studies (NEEDS, 2010) project this trend to continue, with future climate-related costs predicted to be in the range of $6-14 billion every year.
Amid this backdrop, a silver lining after the “Doha Gateway” is the commitment for developing a new financial instrument to estimate and potentially compensate affected countries for the “loss and damage” occurring due to climate change. For a country like Pakistan such an instrument could have extremely far-reaching implications, particularly because it explicitly includes slow-onset events such as the floods that ravaged through the country in the recent past. However, the utility of all such instruments lies not in endless intellectual debates and nuanced negotiations at the climate talks but in the actual delivery of climate finance, which has so far remained absent.
The appalling lack of progress on climate-finance commitments reflects the single-largest failure of countries to act with urgency and resolve on climate change. Doha witnessed yet another unapologetic reiteration of the old promise of $100 billion/year finance by 2020, while only a paltry $6 billion in concrete commitments showed up on the table from Germany, the UK, France, Denmark, Sweden and the EU. The rest of the promised finance remains a pipedream.
On an institutional note, the Green Climate Fund – which, incidentally is yet to be actually funded – has now been housed in South Korea while the Climate Technology Centre which is promising to deliver appropriate and feasible transfer of technology has been given over to a consortium overseen by the UNEP. Both these Doha decisions, although of a purely housekeeping nature, could eventually help to streamline the delivery of these two important elements of climate change whenever the political will finally crystallises.
The Doha Gateway may have opened the floodgates to even more futile talks and political posturing, but it has certainly not paved a pathway towards arresting the climate crisis. While the world has collectively chosen to shy away again from climate challenge, Pakistan as a country remains on the frontline of this crisis and does not have the luxury of opting out of this situation. It needs to set its house in order to plan and prepare for this challenge and wage a war that is crucial for its own survival as a viable economy directly threatened by climate change.
The writer, a former minister of state for environment, is member of the Advisory Group on Climate Change and Sustainable Development. Email: amin.attock@gmail.com
Malik Amin Aslam Khan
Wednesday, December 12, 2012
From Print Edition
Source: http://www.thenews.com.pk/Todays-News-9-147895-Climate-Gateway-to-nowhere
