DURBAN, South Africa (Reuters) – almost 200 countries began on Monday the international talks on climate over time playing against him to save the Kyoto Protocol, designed to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases to which scientists accuse of an increase in the levels of the sea, intense storms, droughts and bad crops.
Countries have faced for years and there is little hope of achieving some significant progress, despite the increasingly serious warnings of climate experts. Diplomats also wondered if the host South Africa will be equal to the challenge of mediating in tough bargaining that extends until December 9 in Durban.
Poor countries say that the rich have enriched using coal, oil and gas and that they be allowed to develop to overcome poverty. Developed countries say that the major developing economies, like China, India and Brazil, must submit to emissions targets for the world to have any chance of stopping the dangerous change climate.
And there is a lot at risk. Two UN reports this month said that the greenhouse gases have reached levels unprecedented in the atmosphere and global warming would probably bring more floods, stronger cyclones and droughts more intense.
The Organization for cooperation and economic development (OECD) said that the global average temperature could rise between 3 and 6 degrees Celsius at the end of the century if Governments do not contain emissions, which cause a destruction unprecedented, with the melting of glaciers and the increase in the level of the sea.
Said that an increase of 80 per cent of global energy demand would increase emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2 by 70 percent by 2050) and it was anticipated that emissions from transport is duplication, due in part to an increase in demand for automobiles in developing countries.
The Kyoto Protocol commits the most developed countries to legally binding targets for reducing emissions of greenhouse gases, causing the warming of the planet. The talks in Durban are the last chance to establish a new round of goals before the end of the first phase of the Protocol in 2012.
“It may seem impossible, but you can get it done,” he told the delegates Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on the changing climate.
Small steps
Diplomats expect to be some progress in financing to help developing countries with increased risk to the effects of global warming, especially in Africa and small island States island.
Rich countries committed themselves to the goal of providing $ 100 billion a year for the climate by 2020. However, United States and Saudi Arabia have objected to some aspects of the Green Fund for climate, to help manage what.
Also the possibility that some rich countries commit themselves to further cuts in emissions. But the debt crisis that is suffering the zone euro and United States makes it unlikely that those countries step up their aid or impose further measures that could harm their prospects for growth.
“Given the current global political and economic situations, the renewal of the Kyoto Protocol is highly unlikely,” said Jennifer Haverkamp, Program Director International of the climate for the Environmental Defense Fund. “But that is not an excuse to make the world feel and do nothing”.
Any agreement depends on China and United States, the largest contributor to the world, from accessing an action binding in a more comprehensive by the year 2015, agreement to something to which both have resisted for years.
Russia, Japan and Canada say that he will not sign a second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol if the major emitters do not also.
Envoys said that he could reach an agreement with a new set of binding objectives but they saw only likely so to sign the European Union, New Zealand, Australia, Norway and Switzerland.
The Alliance of small island States (AOSIS), said: “If Durban postponed a legally binding agreement (…)” “many of our small island developing States are literally and figuratively condemned”.
Despite the promises of cuts emissions by individual countries and the Kyoto Pact, the United Nations, the International Energy Agency and others say that they are not sufficient to prevent that warming of the planet in more than 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial times, a threshold beyond which the scientists say that climate risks become unstable.
