Forestry Investment Blog

Environment ministers of the Brazil, South Africa, India and China (BASIC) bloc met in Cape Town last month to look at how to fast track a deal to curb global warming. This group of developing countries are among the world’s fastest growing carbon emitters and according to them a legally binding global agreement to limit climate change needs to be completed by 2011 at the latest.

“Ministers felt that a legally binding outcome should be concluded at Cancun, Mexico in 2010 or at the latest in South Africa by 2011,” the ministers said in a joint statement, referring to United Nations (UN) climate talks.

Jairam Ramesh, India’s environment and forestry minister, told reporters: “Right now it looks as if we will have to come back to Cape Town in 2011. There is no breakthrough in sight … we have a long way to go.”

The Kyoto Protocol binds together 40 developed countries to cut emissions by 2008-2012. However, the US didn’t ratify it and since then UN climate meetings have failed to reach a legally binding agreement on what will happen post 2012. The closest they have come was last year at Copenhagen when 100 countries backed a non-binding accord to limit global warming to below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrialised times, but it did not point out how this would be achieved.

The Copenhagen Accord is supported by the US but the majority of emerging economies do not want it to supplant the 1992 UN Climate Convention, which puts the responsibility on the developed nations to take the lead in cutting emissions and combating climate change. However the developed nations are unwilling to take on new commitments post 2012 unless the main emerging nations such as India, China and Brazil also sign up.

A proposal was put forward by the BASIC ministers to use the US$10 billion to test and demonstrate various ways of adapting to and mitigating climate change. They pointed out that the world could not wait for the US, the world’s second biggest carbon emitter after China, to pass domestic legislation needed to conclude negotiations.

A compromise climate change bill, considered a priority of President Barack Obama was delayed by a bipartisan working group. Other nations have been closely watching the US and this just goes to show that their scepticism of the US commitment to fight global warming is justified.

“Of course there is no way to fight climate change without the United States and we believe that we can be able to build an agreement that (would enable) the United States to come on board,” Izabella Teixeira, Brazil’s environment minister, told journalists.

Her South Africa counterpart, Buyelwa Sonjica, said if the United States did not soon pass necessary domestic climate laws, “that would impact on vulnerable countries, making them remain at risk”.

As the world fell into recession in 2008 emissions from industrial countries fell by 2.2%, which is the sharpest fall since the break up of the Soviet Union. Unfortunately according to experts there is no real basis for believing that the decline was anything to do with a coordinated effort to tackle emissions.

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This entry was posted on Friday, June 4th, 2010 at 8:26 AM and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.