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CLIMATE CHANGE: Small Victories for the South

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Jul 2 2004 (IPS) - After four years of debate, the developing South has worn down the industrialised North’s resistance to discuss adapting to climate change instead of focussing only on curbing the emissions of greenhouse gases.

”The emphasis of the upcoming conference on climate change will be on adaptation,” Raúl Estrada Oyuela, environmental affairs director for Argentina’s Foreign Ministry and chief organiser of the Dec. 6-17 meeting to take place in Buenos Aires, told IPS.

For the 132 developing countries represented in the Group of 77 (G77), the largest bloc in the United Nations arena, the acceptance of separating the mitigation and adaptation debates is an important achievement because it will allow work to continue on reducing emissions while also attending to the critical vulnerabilities of each region to the impacts of climate change.

”Adaptation is fundamental,” Argentine climatologist Osvaldo Canziani, told IPS. He is co-chair of one of the working groups of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, an advisory group to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

”It has been a battle of the G77 since COP6 (Sixth Conference of Parties to the UNFCCC), held in 2001 in Nairobi, Canziani said. The Global Environment Facility (GEF), an agency of the World Bank, ”at the time did not agree to finance adaptation projects, but instead placed priority on mitigation,” he added.

The climatologist explained that the emissions of gases that cause what is known as the greenhouse effect, mostly come from industrialised countries, but because the gases spread through the atmosphere they affect all countries.

The rich nations initially agreed to finance projects for curbing emissions but when talk turned to adaptation, it was a different story.

Adaptation implies poor countries building infrastructure to deal with higher sea levels, for example, or spending more money on research and technology, but the industrialised world, represented in the Group of Eight (G8) wealthiest countries, ”suggested that it was a local issue, one that did not merit financing from the GEF,” he said.

After a series of climate change conferences and faced with growing scientific evidence about the need to prepare for the inevitable increase in average global temperatures, the G8 countries finally agreed to put the adaptation issue on the table for the 10th conference, to be held in the Argentine capital.

The greenhouse gases, with carbon dioxide the biggest culprit (produced primarily from the burning of petroleum, coal and natural gas), create a layer in the atmosphere that traps solar radiation, thus driving up the average temperatures of the planet, and leading to extreme weather conditions.

Climate change is manifest in altered patterns of rainfall – leading to drought or flooding – and the melting of glaciers and the polar ice caps, which leads to rising sea levels, among other phenomena.

The adaptation issue was accepted by the meeting of delegates from 188 countries party to the UNFCCC held in Bonn, Jun. 16-25. Separate workshops on curbing emissions and adapting to climate change took place, and it was agreed that the emphasis of the Buenos Aires conference will be the latter.

”The industrialised countries understood that if the part of the world that produces food does not adapt to climate change, it would lose its harvests, and the other part of the world would face hunger,” said Canziani. He underscored the need for regional adaptation to the effects of climate change.

”If there is deforestation in the Amazon, there is less rain and there won’t be any more rivers in the Andes,” said the expert, illustrating the trans-border environmental impacts of human activities.

The G77 delegates also convinced the GEF to get rid of its mechanism of fixed contributions from countries for feeding its fund, and instead adopt budgets in keeping with the needs of developing countries for carrying forward their climate change adaptation projects.

The G8 did not want to discuss how much money to contribute but wanted a unilateral approach. The developing countries, however, want the budget to be established according to need, said delegates who had attended the GEF meetings in Bonn.

”We want COP10 (the UNFCCC meet in Buenos Aires) to define how much the necessary funds are,” said Ana Bianchi, a member of the Argentine delegation, during a meeting of non-governmental organisations preparing for the December conference.

Chief organiser Estrada Oyuela said the hope is that Russia will ratify the Kyoto Protocol before the COP10 takes place. The 1997 protocol established targets for industrialised countries for reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 2012 to five percent below what they were in 1990.

To enter into force, the Kyoto Protocol needs to be ratified by countries whose combined emissions represent 55 percent of the global total. By the end of 2003, the ratifications represented 44.3 percent. Russia’s ratification would put the combined total at 61 percent.

But it would be even better, say activists, if it included the United States, because the total would reach 80 percent, not including Russia. The United States is the world’s leading producer of greenhouse gases, but the George W. Bush administration withdrew the signature that his predecessor Bill Clinton had put to the Kyoto Protocol.

So far, the climate change meetings have failed because the emphasis has been on trying to convince the leaders in greenhouse gas emissions to meet their abatement commitments. This time, even though there is the possibility of Russia’s ratification, the agenda ensures there will be progress even if the protocol does not enter into force, says Estrada Oyuela.

But he added there is a ”certain willingness” among delegates to discuss the second phase of commitments for curbing emissions beyond the Kyoto agreement (which focuses on the 2008-1012 period) in order to ”create an alternative for the United States to return to the system.”

Estrada acknowledged that the alternative would be to discuss efficiency goals in energy use related to gross domestic product (GNP) or to volumes of production for each economic sector.

These issues will not be defined in Buenos Aires, said the official, but there is a willingness to use the Argentine conference as an initial foothold for future negotiations.