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A global summit on climate change is to begin in Durban, South Africa on Monday (November 28), but several leading scientists and environmentalists doubt the gathering will significantly advance the world?s response to global warming.
According to climatologists, higher temperatures worldwide are happening because power stations and factories continue to emit harmful substances, such as carbon dioxide, by burning coal for energy. The experts want all nations and especially the world?s leading polluters ? including the United States, Europe, China and India ? to commit in Durban to drastic reductions in so-called greenhouse gases.
?Most importantly we need the U.S. and China on board, because those two are responsible for 44 percent of the world?s carbon emissions. If a deal doesn?t include them, we?ll continue baking the planet,? said Tristan Taylor, climate change project coordinator at Earthlife Africa. ?We also need particularly India, Brazil and South Africa to make that effort. We can get the U.S. and Europe on board, but if the big developing nations don?t make significant emissions reductions, we?ll be back to square one.?
If all countries don?t switch soon to producing clean power, such as energy generation from wind and the sun, environmentalists say the world will face a future filled with extreme weather events, such as droughts and floods, on an unprecedented scale. These would, they say, have terrible consequences, including global food shortages, economic and political upheaval and the spread of potentially fatal infectious diseases.
World leaders recognized the dangers of a warming planet in 1992, when they formulated the United Nations Framework Convention on (UNFCCC). The parties to the convention meet annually, at gatherings known as Conferences of the Parties. Durban will be the scene of the 17 such meeting ? COP 17.
?We need a comprehensive, binding multilateral climate agreement but as things stand right now, Durban will not be the place where that is delivered,? said Tasneem Essop, international climate policy advocate for the Worldwide Fund for Nature.
Essop, a veteran of several COP meetings and a former provincial environment minister in South Africa, said there?s ?no sign? that developed countries are ready to commit to ?very ambitious? targets to reduce harmful emissions.
She added, ?We would want to see developing countries ramping up their ambitions as well in terms of what they can do to reduce their emissions. We would also want to see large-scale international funding for actions taken by developing countries. We?ve seen none of this so far in build-up talks to Durban.?
Kevin Chika Urama, a Kenyan ecological economist, is the co-author of an internationally acclaimed study on the impacts of climate change on Africa. He insisted that ?divine intervention? is needed to secure consensus in Durban. ?If we don?t come up with a binding agreement, I will be very disappointed, because (it will mean) we are really playing games with something that is a game changer for the global economy, for the human race as a whole.?
Taylor stated, ?My heart says yes, we should get a deal. My head says no, the countries are far too far apart.? Without advances on cutting carbon emissions, he said there?s a danger that COP 17 will do ?more harm than good. You take a country like Mali. The COP that?s coming here to South Africa will probably produce more carbon in that month than the entire country of Mali does.?
Olivia Langhoff, campaign director for Greenpeace Africa, does not expect most countries to act in the interests of the world at COP 17. ?Countries, specifically those that are intensive users of energy, are still playing their power games and bent on acting to serve their own narrow national self-interests,? she said. ?And that means they?ll largely just continue to burn coal.?
International talks to prepare for COP 17 have been fraught with tension and disagreements among several key players.
?I?ve been dismayed at all the finger-pointing,? said Lester Brown, one of the world?s top environmental scientists and president of the U.S. Earth Policy Institute. ?The U.S. says, ?We?re not going to do anything unless China and India do it.? Then China and India say, ?But you got to burn coal for 150 years to grow your economy; we also want to burn coal to develop our economies.
At this stage, said South African environmental researcher Taryn Pereira, COP 17 will fail because of ?exactly this kind of vacuum of real leadership. Each country is kind of waiting and holding their cards close to their chest and saying, ?Well, we?ll act (against climate change) if you?ll act.