Two-day meet in Brussels ahead of global climate change talks in Bonn next week
Old divisions between developed and developing countries in who should lead the fight against climate change should be laid aside, according to ministers from some of the world's poorest countries and European representatives meeting on May 8.
The vexed issue of which countries should bear the greatest responsibility for cutting greenhouse gas emissions has been a sticking point in international negotiations for two decades. Under the original settlement reached in 1992 at the Rio Earth summit, and formalised in the 1997 Kyoto protocol, some rapidly emerging economies such as China were left out of the roster of obligations to curb emissions.
However, China is now the world's biggest emitter and second biggest economy, prompting many nations to question whether the divisions that were relevant 20 years ago should still apply today.
Ministers from the world's least developed countries, small island states and a sprinkling of developed and larger developing nations gathered in Brussels for a two-day meeting ahead of global climate change talks in Bonn next week.
Connie Hedegaard, the European climate chief, who was hosting the meeting, said: “Countries have recognised that the old division between developed and developing countries — there are limits to how useful that is in the 21st century.” She said countries wanted “something more dynamic” in terms of determining the contributions to emissions reductions made by richer and poorer countries, than the current system, by which “every two decades countries decide on the categorisation”.
Negotiations on a possible new global treaty that would succeed the Kyoto protocol are to resume again this November, after last year's talks concluded with a resolution to write a new agreement by 2015 that would come into force from 2020.
Interim discussions among the world's environment ministers will take place later this month in Bonn, Germany, at which some of the parameters for the next three years of talks will set out.
Ms Hedegaard said: “We need to set out a work programme [for drawing up a global agreement] and how to get there.” In advance of last year's talks in Durban, South Africa, the EU forged an alliance among the world's least developed countries, small island states that will be worst affected by climate change, and a variety of developed and developing nations, to push for a new global agreement on emissions to be signed by 2015 and implemented by 2020. However, China and India held out against such an agreement until the last minutes of the Durban talks, and are understood to be wary of any attempt to move away from the rigid classification of many countries under the Kyoto protocol, under which developing countries are absolved from any legally binding obligation to address their greenhouse gas emissions. — © Guardian Newspapers Limited, 2012
It is a bit hypocritical of the Western states to harp on this. Consider the fact that
the West is producing practically no manufactured goods, i.e. no value to the world
economy and still has an enormous per capita consumption of resources and
energy.
The enormous greenhouse emissions induced by production and transport of
goods made in Asia and shipped to the West are conveniently forgotten by
politicians proudly announcing that the West is cutting greenhouse emissions and
lambasting China and India for polluting the environment.
There ought to be a "emission-deposit" which would be levied on the emitter of
greenhouse gases but refunded to him by the purchaser of goods. That way, the
Western consumers will have to pay for the indirect emissions they cause. The
prices for good are ridiculously low here despite most of it being profit margins for
retailers. Let's see if the high-minded Westerners are as environment-loving if they
have to pay for it.
Charity begins at home!
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