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CLIMATE CHANGE: Crisis After Kyoto Confronted
By Julio Godoy
VIENNA, Aug 28 (IPS) - Human-made emissions of greenhouse gases believed to provoke damaging climate change must peak in the next 10 to 15 years, and be reduced afterwards by well over 50 percent from current levels until 2050, a top UN climate official said here Tuesday.
Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), told IPS that this must be done in order to avert environmental and humanitarian catastrophes associated with global warming.
"Industrialised countries need to reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG) by 25 percent to 40 percent after 2012," he said. But emerging developing countries must accept that they also have a role in reducing emissions, he said.
The UNFCCC, based in Bonn, Germany, is the UN agency concerned with implementation of the Kyoto Protocol, which set the GHG emissions reduction for industrialised countries.
De Boer is participating in the new round of climate change talks which started Monday. These talks aim to set the stage for the next climate change conference in Bali, Indonesia, in December. That conference is expected to advance a new international plan for reduction of emissions after 2012, when the Kyoto Protocol expires.
The Vienna talks seek to provide the Bali conference with new knowledge on financial needs for mitigation of climate change and its environmental, social and economic consequences. De Boer said that the "mitigation measures needed to return global GHG emissions to present levels by 2030 require between 200 and 210 billion dollars per year."
The Vienna talks will also assess the Nairobi adaptation fund, decided upon in the Kenyan capital in 2006. This fund would provide developing countries with additional financing for coping with climate change consequences.
De Boer told IPS that a strong momentum is building up for new steps in the global policy against climate change. "Even U.S. President George W. Bush has decided to take the bull by the horns, and has advanced a proposal to be discussed by the leaders of the larger GHG emitters in Washington next month," De Boer said.
The most industrialised countries, especially the United States, together with China and India, account for 85 percent of global emissions. These countries also represent 70 percent of the global population and 85 percent of global GDP.
But global warming is affecting people everywhere. Its consequences are being felt in the form of inundations, hurricanes, droughts, and increased incidence of diseases such as malaria.
Monyane Moleleki, foreign minister of the Southern African country Lesotho told IPS that climate change was having profound effects on agriculture. "The farmers are suffering because nothing happens when it is supposed to - the traditional rainy seasons are no longer predictable. The number of droughts has doubled since the late 1970s, and when the rains come, they come in torrents."
De Boer said the Vienna talks might not lead to "spectacular decisions" but "basically show how we can forward policy measures to achieve emission reductions."
Leon Charles from Grenada who chairs the ad hoc working group on further commitments by the industrialised signatories of the Kyoto protocol, said the Vienna talks might not convey "legally binding targets" on emission reductions, but should send "a strong signal to other countries of the environmental integrity of the industrialised world." (END/2007)
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