Compromise tough to find in Durban

Breaking stalemates and deadlocks was at the heart of the challenge facing delegates at the COP17 climate summit in Durban as it moved into its final week, but hopefully South Africa won’t fail to capitalise on the green fever that has gripped the world. At the same time the Kyoto protocol seems doomed in the wake of an apparent widening gap between mature and emerging economies.

According to a ‘green jobs’ report released on Friday, the largest contribution to the future job market could come from natural resource management due to the rich endowment that South Africa has in terms of solar and wind power.

The report, compiled by the Industrial Development Council and the Development Bank of South Africa, estimated that as many as 500 000 jobs could be created in a greener economy.

“As more and more businesses, households and the public sector begin to embrace green technologies and practices, the potential exists to create a sustainable number of new job opportunities and to facilitate reskilling,” the report stated.

South Africa currently produces more than 90% of its electricity from coal-fired power stations and accounts for just over 1% of man-made greenhouse gases in the world.

The government, through its green tax system, collected nearly R700-million over the past year from levies and taxes on plastic bags, fuel, electricity, vehicle emissions and air travel.

Now the government is intensifying plans to move to a low-carbon economy within the next decade, with the recent signing of the national green economy accord in Pretoria.

But the hopes that South Africa as a developing nation could benefit from the 100-billion-dollar Green Climate Fund, is fading as fully industrialised nations were dugging their heels in at the COP17 climate summit.

Disputes about sharing responsibility for atmospheric pollution lay at the heart of the stalemate among delegates the past week over whether the Durban conference would secure a continuation of the Kyoto Protocol.

Canada stated that Kyoto was based on an outdated view of developed and developing worlds. “There is a fairly widely held perception in the developing world of the need for guilt payment,” Peter Kent, Candian environment minister, told delegates.

“Kyoto is ineffective and unfair because the major emerging economies, which still like to consider themselves, when convenient, developing economies, are obviously the largest emitters,” Kent told the Mail & Guardian.

The European Union, Japan and the United States backed the view that developing economies had to take on more responsibility. as a World Meteorological Organisation report indicated that climate-changing gases had reached new highs in the atmosphere.

Because of human activities, the warmest 13 years of average global temperatures had occurred since 1997 and this year was one of the warmest recorded.

The European Union said current and future emissions had to be factored in at the negotiations. Although Europe’s emissions fell by 17,4% between 1990 and 2010, China’s rose by 206% and India’s by 144%.

Global economic shifts were blurring the distinction between developed and developing countries so that, by 2020, the latter would account for nearly two-thirds of global emissions, reported the Mail & Guardian.

Connie Hedegaard, the European commissioner for climate action, said the European Union is ready for a global treaty but the reality is that the other economies, like the United States and China, are not.

A second Kyoto period with only the European Union, representing 11% of global emissions, is not enough to affect the climate. This cannot constitute success in Durban. The question is: when will others follow.

The United States, responsible for 18% of global emissions, said it wanted large emerging economies brought into the mix by 2020.

“The major emerging economies represent a much larger and growing share of global emissions than a decade ago. We can’t be in the same discussions as a decade ago around their engagement,” said Jonathan Pershing, the American deputy special envoy for climate change.

The Japanese delegation said they won’t support a second Kyoto commitment that covered only 26% of the global emissions and was not fair or effective.

To solve the problem of climate change, it is important to reconcile emissions reductions with economic development in developed countries and in developing countries, said the Japanese delegation.

But developing countries held to their positions that, based on historic contributions to climate change, wealthy countries should accept further legally binding emission cuts when Kyoto ends in 2012 and pay for the harm caused by 200 years of industrialisation.

The Chinese urged developed countries to rise up to their responsibilities and take the lead by undertaking ambitious and robust mitigation commitments consistent with science.

In the meantime, Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, South Africa’s president of the COP17 climate summit, faces a major challenge; the COP17-plenary agreed she would host informal talks to try to broker a consensus agreement on the operationalisation of the Green Climate fund that is designed to assist developing countries to mitigate and adapt to climate change.

The question is whether the industrialised nations and the emerging countries will be able to broker a deal, and whether the big players involved in the stalemate, the United States, China and India, would be prepared to compromise.

If not, Kyoto will be buried in Durban, and currently, that looks dead certain.

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Comments (1)

• |2011-12-06 11:05:17 Ana  - Blind and selfish
  If developped countries give underdevelopped nations aid to rise their economies trhough "green industry" they are paying their guilt and helping stop global warming. It seems a fare enough equation, but the risk of having a more efficient and power competitor on global business is a situation that no one want in the first world. They are more afraid of loosing market that loosing the planet. We are all blind and selfish!!!
  
  
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