By JAMES LARAKI of NARI
AS we welcome 2012, we also commend
world leaders on the comprehensive global treaty on climate change agreement
reached for the first time after at talks in Durban, South Africa last December.
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NARI team demonstrating the rope and
washer pump technology at the Enga Show in 2011. This simple-easy to construct
water harvesting technology is being promoted to assist rural communities to
source water in the event of a drought.
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The
two-week long Durban talks attended by more than 190 countries agreed to start work on a new climate
deal that would have legal force and, crucially, require both developed and
developing countries to cut their carbon emissions.
The terms now need to be agreed by
2015 and come into effect from 2020.
The agreement – dubbed the
"Durban platform" – is different from the other partial deals that
have been struck during the past two decades, with developing countries,
including China, the world's biggest emitter, agreeing to be legally bound to
curb their greenhouse gases.
Previously, poorer nations have
insisted that they should not bear any legal obligations for tackling climate
change, whereas rich nations, which over more than a century have produced most
of the carbon currently in the atmosphere should.
Another first is that the US, the
second biggest emitter, also agreed that the new pact would have "legal
force", a step it flirted with in 1997 with the Kyoto protocol, but
abandoned as Congress made clear it would never ratify that agreement.
All of the world's biggest economies
and emitters already have targets to cut emissions between now and 2020, when
the new deal would come into force.
But many commentators view these
targets are voluntary, not legally binding.
The EU and many others fear that
voluntary targets are too easy to wriggle out of.
However, the deal did little to
address the scale of emissions cuts needed, and environmental groups said this
was a huge failing.
Commentators were of the opinion that
governments have salvaged a path forward for negotiations, but are under no
illusion, saying the outcome of Durban leaves us with the prospect of being
legally bound to a world of 4C warming.
This they believe would be
catastrophic for people and the natural world. Commentators say governments
have spent crucial days focused on a handful of specific words in the
negotiating text, but have paid little heed to repeated warnings from the
scientific community that much stronger, urgent action is needed to cut
emissions."
While all nations are obliged to reduce emissions, how
much will global emission be reduced and by when are some unanswered questions
that negotiators continue to push them around.
And many commentators are of the view
that the ambitions to keep the temperature raise
at 4C may be nowhere near to prevent
disasters that are likely to occur across the globe.
Important
decisions on implementation of the cuts of emissions, how this burden will be
shared between developed and developing countries, and how all this will be
enforced are uncertain.
Lord Stern, former World Bank chief
economist and author of the landmark 2006 review of the economics of climate
change, said: "The outcome of the summit is a modest but significant step
forward.
“The decision to move towards a
unified system, with all countries having some form of legal commitments,
removes an important obstacle and could allow, for example, the US to play a
more participative and constructive role in the future."
The agreement reached also ensured
that developing countries will soon begin to gain access to billions of pounds
in finance from the rich world to help them move to a green economy and cope
with the effects of climate change.
PNG, for example needs to understand how we fit into
such agreements as the issue of climate change is of paramount to over 80% of
the six million- plus people. We need to understand what would be done to
achieve the required rate of reducing emission and whether the funding
available could cater of the expected cuts.
While it is not clear what exactly rich countries are
targeting by establishing this fund, reducing or minimising deforestation is
obvious.
But deforestation
may not work well for many developing nations including PNG who depend on it
for income.
Many commentators have cited the Cancun
Agreements concerning REDD+ (Reductions in Emissions from
Deforestation and Forest Degradation) as another cause for optimism.
After all, deforestation causes roughly as many emissions
globally as transportation does, and the agreements pledge to give
developing countries financial incentives to leave forests standing.
If that has to happen, the incentives should march the
likely income that would have come from harvesting forest.
Developing
countries need to make a realistic approach to this and work out whether their
expected income from harvesting forest can be compensated from the Green
Climate Fund.
Such realistic
figures could form the basis of negotiations and should help development of
guidelines on how the fund is managed and disbursed.
The outcomes of Durban provide a
welcome boost for global climate action.
They reflect the growing, and in some quarters
unexpected, determination of countries to act collectively.
This provides a clear signal and
predictability to economic planners, businesses and investors about the future
of low-carbon economies.
A number of specific commitments
agreed in Durban also indicate that previous decisions on financing, technology
and REDD+ are moving to implementation.
The big question many will ask is how
this will translate into actual emission reductions and by when?
Whatever answer will emerge in the coming
months, Durban has kept the door open for the world to respond to climate
change based on science and common sense rather than political expediency.
