Public Agenda (Accra)
Basiru Adam
25 August 2008
column
Once again, another round of talks has brought the world together in Accra. This time, the 'developed world' is not being asked to fulfill hovering promises of handouts to poor, needy countries, but to show more commitment in the fight against a bane they mainly helped in bringing about - climate change.
The issue is that humans must reduce the emission of green house gasses in an effort to prevent what they call anthropogenic climate change.
These gasses are threatening the very existence of humanity as they are alarmingly fostering unprecedented levels of global warming. Ice is melting in many parts of the world and the Tsunamis and hurricanes are sweeping away human habitations.
The latest round of UN-sponsored global climate change negotiations got underway Thursday in Accra. More than 1600 participants, including government delegates from 160 countries and representatives from business and industry, environmental organizations and research institutions are attending the one-week meeting of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
The Accra talks constitute the third major UNFCCC negotiating session this year to get to an agreement on strengthened long-term cooperative action on climate change. The deal is to be clinched in December 2009 in Copenhagen, Denmark.
The talks also follow a conference last December in Bali leading to the adoption of the Bali Road Map. The road map included an action plan for a new negotiating process designed to tackle climate change.
This of course flows from the Kyoto Protocol adopted in December 1997 - the international framework convention on climate change with the objective of reducing green house gasses in an effort to prevent anthropogenic climate change.
As of May 2008, 182 parties have ratified the protocol. Of these, 36 developed contact group countries (plus the EU as a party in its own right) are required to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to the levels specified for each of them in the treaty (representing over 61.6% of emissions from Annex I countries), with three more countries intending to participate. One hundred and thirty-seven (137) developing countries have ratified the protocol, including Brazil, China and India, but have no obligation beyond monitoring and reporting emissions.
The United States is the only developed country that has not ratified the treaty and is the second biggest greenhouse gas emitter. Among various experts, scientists, and critics, there is debate about the usefulness of the protocol, and there have been cost-benefit studies performed on its usefulness - Wikipidia.com.
At the opening of the Accra talks, the President of the Republic of Ghana, John Agyekum Kufour, called to mind the fact that rainfall in Ghana has decreased by 20% over the past 30 years. Also, up to 1,000km2 of land may be lost in the Volta Delta due to sea-level rise and inundation should greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise at the current pace.
Indeed, Ghana has also become a dumping ground for all sorts of electronic waste including computers. Jobless young people are burning this mass and mass of dangerous carbon emitting computer parts in search of copper.
President Kufour was thus forthright in drawing attention to the fact that time was running out on humanity and that it was high time all hands were put on deck to curb the climate change problem.
First, developing countries, which do not produce much of the dangerous gasses and yet suffer the most, should commit to plan for climate resilient development.
Second, and most importantly, the international community should commit to provide adequate, predictable, long-term funding and support in terms of technology transfer and capacity building.
As such, president Kufour called for an international "compact" that would not only drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but generate the "billions of dollars" poor countries needed to adapt to the inevitable effects of climate change.
What is hopeful is that the Accra conference will include a joint discussion on both the finance and technology needed to limit emissions and adapt to climate change. This will create an interlinked discussion on a number of elements of the Copenhagen agreement. "Parties will look not only at what is needed in terms of funding, but also at how funding should be generated in the context of a new international deal, and precisely what technologies are required," the UN's top climate change official Mr. Yvo de Boer said. He said further that "The debate will also give an indication of the infrastructure needed to implement a shared vision in the areas of finance, technology and capacity building."
Trade negotiations have often ended in stalemates and a lot of promises on reducing global hunger and other social ills have not been fulfilled.
As such, as stakeholders converge once again to seek a global determination to deal this time with a problem that does not discriminate in its quest to devastate the planet earth; commitment remains the watch word.
Read comments. Write your own.
Copyright © 2008 Public Agenda. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
