Month: November 2011

Durban (South Africa), 29 nov (EFE).-the UN Conference on climate change (COP17) that began Monday in South Africa Durban faces important challenges to keep alive the struggle against change climate.

The keys to understanding the Conference are as follows:

1. What is the COP17?

Is the 17th Conference of the parties of the United Nations on climate change (COP17), which is part of the framework Convention of the UN on climate change (UNFCCC, 1992).

Summit, held in Durban from 28 November to 9 December, is the most comprehensive multilateral forum (195 countries) to discuss and take action against global warming.

2. What were the results of the previous Summit (COP16) in 2010 in Cancún (Mexico)?

The Cancún Summit managed to restore hope of achieving an international agreement on the fight against climate change after the failure of the edition of Copenhagen (COP15).

While it provided no solution to the more complicated issue, the renewal of a second period of the Kyoto Protocol commitment, the Mexican event was able to boot the will of the emerging countries to commit to reducing emissions, one of the main demands of the Western economies.

Agreements collected, in addition, implementation of a Green Fund for climate that will make available to developing countries $ 100 billion per year from 2020 to shift to cleaner energies and combating change climate.

Cancun appointed a transitory Committee to design the mechanisms of the Fund, which channelled the contributions of rich countries towards developing countries, whose objective is to create a new economic framework in which all compete in equal conditions.

3. What are the major debates in Durban?

-The renewal of the Kyoto Protocol.

The Kyoto Protocol, which was signed in 1997 and entered into force in 2005, established legally binding commitments to reduce emissions of gases greenhouse for 37 developed countries and the European Union. The agreement was not ratified by the United States and does not oblige China, India and Brazil as economies emerging.

The Protocol expires at the end of 2012 and the negotiators trying to agree on a second commitment period to serve as transition to a new international agreement legally binding.

Developing countries consider essential that Western economies to ratify the second commitment period of the Protocol, while Russia, Japan and Canada have announced that did not renew the Treaty while its commercial competitors, China, India and us not commitments similar.

-The capitalization of the Green Fund for the climate.

The transition Committee established by the Cancún Summit mandate and consisting of experts from various fields, has worked this year in the design of the mechanisms of the Green Fund.

Differences over the sources of funding, the form of access to funding, the involvement of private initiative and actions that could benefit from that bag of money ended to prevent an agreement more than one month before the meeting in Durban, with the refusal of the US and Saudi Arabia to subscribe to the text.

The negotiators must resolve their differences to achieve release the necessary economic contributions and encourage the developing economies to adopt commitments.

-Reducing emissions to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius.

The scientific consensus is the ceiling on global warming in 2 degrees centigrade the temperature prior to the industrial era, as the point of no return rather than the consequences of climate change can become fatal.

To achieve this objective, the countries must analyse how cutting the emission of gases that cause global warming even more global.

4. And after Durban?

Countries will again meet in taste (COP18) at the end of 2012. However, if a second commitment period is not agreed upon in Durban of the Kyoto Protocol, it will expire in 2012 and the world will be left without the only legally binding agreement on emission reductions. EFE