Strong South African Leadership is called for at COP 17 {writer:Fanie Heyns}

Strong South African leadership will be crucial during the 17th Conference of the Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP 17) in Durban in November and December 2011. Several key issues will need to be answered, particularly those surrounding the Kyoto Protocol.

During the past months, several experts have expressed their disgust and alarm at what they term “procrastination in the global fight against global warming”.

But let us first take a look at the Kyoto Protocol. It is an international agreement linked to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. The major feature of the Protocol is that it sets binding targets for 37 industrialised countries and the European community for reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. These targets amount to an average of 5% against 1990 levels over the five-year period of 2008 to 2012.

A new international framework required

By the end of the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol in 2012, a new international framework needs to have been negotiated and ratified, which can deliver the stringent emissions reductions that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has clearly indicated are required.

But will there be a new international framework, and a new commitment?

Setbacks

During the past two months, there have been definite setbacks in the global fight against climate change.

In July, conservative members of the European parliament defied British Prime Minister David Cameron and narrowly swung a vote against tougher European climate change targets.

Tory opposition helped make the difference in a European parliament vote, which watered down a call for an unconditional increase in Europe’s emissions reduction target from 20% to 30%. The Tories instead backed a successful centre-right amendment for a 30% target, “provided that conditions are right” – an alteration to a climate change report that the majority of Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) then voted down.

The report’s author, Dutch Green MEP Bas Eickhout, said afterward that he had been forced to recommend the rejection of his own report because it had been “hijacked” by Conservative and other centre-right MEPs.

Liberal Democrat MEP Chris Davies had warned that the Tory MEPs risked ruining the United Kingdom’s reputation as a leading voice in the fight against global warming.

But Tory leader in the European Parliament Martin Callanan argued that a unilateral increase would put European companies at a competitive disadvantage globally.

Also in July, President Bharrat Jagdeo of Guyana raised the issue of undisbursed climate change funds with Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos and the European Commissioner from Latvia Andris Piebalgs, at the 32nd Caribbean Community (Caricom) Heads of Government Conference in Basseterre, St. Kitts.

President Jagdeo said he raised the issue from the perspective of the undistributed funds pledged as part of the Copenhagen Accord reached at COP 15, and of predictable and adequate additional funding.

Also discussed was improved access for developing countries to enable and support enhanced action.

The accord provides for developed countries to raise $30 billion from 2010 to 2012 from new and additional resources, and to set a “goal” for the world to raise $100bn per year by 2020 from “a wide variety of sources” to help developing countries cut carbon emissions.

Where are the funds?

New multilateral funding for adaptation is to be delivered, with a governance structure.

President Jagdeo said that despite this, “the World Bank’s index shows that 10 of the 15 most vulnerable countries can be found in the Caribbean, yet we have seen very little funds pledged in Copenhagen, and this runs into billions of dollars flowing to the Caribbean.”

So there is a deficit between pledges and money disbursed, leading to a lack of trust on the part of the developing world in climate financing.

In a communiqué at the end of the conference, preparations for the upcoming COP 17 from 28 November to 9 December in Durban were noted.

They expressed the hope that at this session, negotiations would result in a balanced outcome that would adequately address the issues that are central to the interests of Caricom.

They agreed to set up a team of experts to formulate a regional plan of action to guide regional negotiators within the forums of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.

Geo-engineering under fire

In June, environmental and human rights organisations from 40 countries sent an open letter to the IPCC chairperson Rajendra Pachauri, protesting against the use of geo-engineering to change the Earth’s climate.

The letter deemed the practice “alarming”, and warned that the IPCC “must take great care not to squander its credibility on… a topic that is gathering steam precisely when there is no real progress on mitigation and adaptation.”

Geo-engineering makes use of schemes and projects designed to tackle the effects of climate change directly, usually by removing carbon dioxide from the air or limiting the amount of sunlight reaching the planet’s surface.

Although large-scale geo-engineering is still at the concept stage, advocates claim that it may eventually become essential if the world wants to avoid the worst effects of climate change.

Criticism against geo-engineering

Critics, by contrast, claim that geo-engineering is not realistic – and may be a distraction from reducing emissions.

Some geo-engineering schemes such as adding aerosols to the stratosphere, have attracted heavy criticism for their possible side effects.

Even if these side effects were not severe, schemes that ‘mask’ the temperature rise rather than removing the CO2 come with serious disadvantages such as the fact that they do not deal with the other major impact of CO2: ocean acidification.

Administering any such scheme would raise obvious issues of geopolitics and global governance.

Other schemes such as the machines designed to suck CO2 directly out of the air, are far less controversial, since all they aim to do is remove a pollutant that humans are adding to the air.

Geo-engineering experts who gathered in June to assess proposals for manipulating the Earth to avoid climate disaster, have stressed that they are not planning to make recommendations about actions that the world should take, but are merely assessing whether the proposals are sound science.

The outcomes of the meeting – closed to the public and convened by the IPCC – will contribute to the IPCC’s “Fifth Assessment Report”, due for publication in 2012.

Kyoto ‘was not far-reaching enough’

The civil society movement, Climate Justice Now!, is disgusted by Kyoto’s low targets (a mere 5% decrease in emissions since 1990), ease of exit (particularly by the world’s worst tar sands polluter, Canada), lack of sanctions against big polluters for not participating (the United States and Australia) or for missing even weak targets (nearly everyone).

It is pointing to the failure to penalise corporate beneficiaries of vast coal operations in sites such as South Africa, and reliance on carbon markets to make emissions cuts more palatable to big capital, thanks to the sleazy deal done by Al Gore in 1997 in exchange for official US support.

Moment critique for global warming in Durban

Pablo Solón, Bolivia’s ambassador to the UN, said about the Durban conference: “South Africa is the place to fight against the new apartheid against Mother Earth and its vital systems.”

Romy Chevallier, senior researcher: Governance of Africa’s Resources programme at the South African Institute of International Affairs in Cape Town, said in a paper delivered at a seminar at the University of Kent in June 2011 that the question of the legal form of the agreement(s) could well determine all the international discussions to take place at COP 17 in Durban.

But less than two years from the end of the first commitment period under the Kyoto Protocol (end of December 2012), the negotiations on the legal form of the future agreement(s) have reached a stalemate.

Very little political change is expected on this subject between now and 2012, which means there is a risk that the UN negotiations may become obsolete.

There are geopolitical realities and opposing views that South Africa needs to highlight. These represent major challenges to a successful COP outcome.

Japan, Russia, Canada and New Zealand are against a second commitment period under the Kyoto Protocol if comparable conditions are not applied by the US (and China).

Second commitment period under the Kyoto Protocol

Developing countries, on the other hand, do not want a global agreement without a second commitment period under the Kyoto Protocol. The BASIC countries (Brazil, South Africa, India and China – the four major emerging countries, or G4) have reiterated this position, confirming that they want a second commitment period to the Kyoto Protocol as central to a comprehensive outcome at COP 17, said Chevallier.

The developing countries added at the recent BASIC meeting in May in Durban that the legally binding Kyoto Protocol was critical to the environmental integrity of the climate change regime.

The European Union would agree to have two agreements as long as there is some degree of equivalence between the Protocol track and the Convention track, said Chevallier.

In the US, the political situation offers little hope of adopting, in the near future, a legally binding agreement with verification and sanction mechanisms such as those under the Kyoto Protocol (at least until 2012 and the end of President Barack Obama’s first term of office).

Chevallier said the South African government’s challenge will be to chair a fair process, but push the conference to be ambitious in finding a solution that would make a meaningful impact on climate change.

While the foundations have been laid, they must still be consolidated. The institutional groundwork started in Cancún must not lead to empty shells or ineffective mechanisms, devoid of countries’ ambitions to tackle the climate threat.

To make this emerging institutional architecture operational, it will be crucial to identify lasting, reliable sources of financing and ensure the coherence of the newly established systems.

The future of existing mechanisms, programmes and funds need to be determined, said Chevallier.

Bond fires broadside at SA government

Patrick Bond, director of the University of KwaZulu-Natal’s Centre for Civil Society in Durban, says that judging by what transpired at the global climate negotiations in the former West German capital of Bonn, it appears certain that Durban will host a “Conference of Procrastinators” – dooming the earth to the frying pan.

Further inaction on climate change will leave Durban’s name as infamous for elite incompetence and political betrayal as is Oslo’s in the Middle East.

Bond says, “It appears certain that Pretoria’s alliance with Washington, Beijing, New Delhi and Brasilia, witnessed in the shameful 2009 Copenhagen Accord, will be extended to other saboteurs of the Kyoto Protocol, especially from Ottawa, Tokyo and Moscow, along with Brussels and London carbon traders.

“What everyone now predicts is a conference of paralysis.

“Not only will the Kyoto Protocol be allowed to expire at the end of its first commitment period (2012). Far worse, Durban will primarily be a conference of profiteers, as carbon trading – the privatisation of the air, giving rich states and companies the property right to pollute – is cemented as the foundation of the next decade’s global climate mal-governance,” he adds.

Bond claims that a telling diplomatic move in Bonn was when Pretoria negotiators, weighed down by team members from maxi-polluters Eskom, Sasol and the National Business Initiative, tried to break African solidarity against EU plans for opening up new carbon markets (in exchange for Europe emitting much more GHG pollution).

That happened, instead of paying the EU’s vast climate debt to Africa straight up, Bond claims.

Legalising climate apartheid

Bond warns against what he terms “legalising climate apartheid”. He adds that South Africa is supporting “homegrown climate-destroying action” such as building two of the world’s four largest coal-fired power plants for $20bn each at Kusile and Medupi (not to mention new nuclear power plants as well).

“It is also digging a vast new $14-billion port in South Durban, constructing a new $12-billion heavy-oil refinery in Port Elizabeth; and offering shale gas fracking exploration rights to South African, Norwegian and US firms in the fragile Drakensberg mountain range,” says Bond.

He notes that in order to meet scientific requirements for planet-saving emissions cuts, a binding UN effort is required, such as that made in 1987 in Montreal to ban chlorofluorocarbons – the chemical that was widening the hole in the ozone layer.

But given the rise of neoliberalism (1990s), neo-conservatism (2000s) and their subsequent fusion as the dominant ideologies within the UN, a repeat of the Montreal Protocol is not possible any time soon, Bond adds.

Climate change ‘mess’ near Greenland

Recently, the Durban-born leader of Greenpeace International Kumi Naidoo attempted the delivery of a 50 000-strong petition to an offshore drilling rig run by Cairn Energy near Greenland.

As he approached the rig, called the Leif Eriksson (named after a Scandinavian Viking tribe), he was hit by near-freezing water cannon blasts and then arrested for violating a court injunction.

Naidoo said: “Arctic oil drilling is one of the defining environmental battles of our age. I’m an African, but I care deeply about what’s happening up here.

“The rapidly melting cap of Arctic sea ice is a grave warning to all of us, so it’s nothing short of madness that companies like Cairn see it as a chance to drill for fossil fuels that got us into this climate change mess in the first place. We have to draw a line and say ‘no more’.”

Quiver trees

Recently, it was reported that quiver trees, the giant tree aloes of the arid regions of South Africa and Namibia, are under threat.

About 10 years ago, researchers became aware that there were big die-offs of quiver trees, reported the Cape Times (6 July 2011).

Scientists at the South African National Biodiversity Institute began to study the plants, and surveyed 54 sites where quiver trees and more than 6 000 individual plants grew, to work out what was causing the die-offs.

They found that most of the deaths were happening in the hotter, northern areas of the quiver tree distribution range.

“These populations were struggling to survive in the hotter, driver conditions, and were slowly losing the equator-ward parts of their range because of climate change,” reported the Cape Times (6 July 2011).