The world’s only legally binding climate agreement started to unravel further at the COP17 talks in Durban on Monday night, amid warnings that star performers in the global “climate change circus” were still stalling on major decisions.
“How far must the water rise in these conference centres before we take a decision?” asked European Union chief negotiator Artur Runge-Metzger in reference to rising sea levels caused by warmer temperatures and the meltdown of polar ice caps.
He said the EU had always supported the Kyoto Protocol, which binds several rich industrial nations to cutting back their greenhouse gas emissions by about five percent in an attempt to slow climate change.
“But Kyoto alone cannot save the planet and more countries are running away from that agreement,” he said, acknowledging that Canada, Russia and Japan were threatening to pull out of the agreement, which already excludes the US, China and other large climate gas polluters.
As things stood now, the protocol would soon control just 15 percent of global emissions – and possibly as little as 11 percent if the EU emerged as the sole survivor of the Kyoto protocol after the Durban talks.
This meant nearly 90 percent of global emissions would fall outside the ambit of legal gas reduction systems unless major emitters agreed to a new treaty framework.
“This is why we need other countries to tell us where this process is going – because otherwise the public will lose confidence in what is sometimes called ‘this travelling circus’ which cannot reach a conclusion… How far must the water rise in these conference centres before we take a decision?” Runge-Metzger said.
At a straight-talking press briefing, the EU said they would be prepared to go it alone for a second commitment period of Kyoto Protocol – only on the strict proviso that all other nations, rich and poor, establish a road map which would lead to all countries committing to a legally-binding framework to cut greenhouse gas emissions. This must be reached by 2015 and come into effect by 2020. The groundwork was to be laid here in Durban.
Runge-Metzger said there was a big “emissions gap” – the shortfall in the emissions countries had pledged to cut and what was needed by science to keep global warming below 2°C. “We are far from reaching our goal of staying below 2°C.”
EU negotiators stopped short of declaring whether the EU was prepared to dump Kyoto or to enter another round of emission cuts from next year if other nations did not meet the union’s latest demands for more concrete commitments.
“That is a question our ministers will have to answer,” said fellow EU negotiator Tomasz Chruszcow.
Referring to the death of eight people in Durban on Sunday in violent storms, Chruszcow said: “Last night, we had tragic evidence where people lost their lives because of torrential rain.
“There is no more time to debate … If we don’t take urgent action, in five or six years it might be too late …
“We need to establish a road map which will lead us to a legally binding framework which will take on every single nation,” Chruszcow said.
Jonathan Pershing, the US deputy special envoy for climate change, said at a briefing: “The US is not party to the Kyoto Protocol so we will not weigh in on the debate.”
He said some countries had said the US should be in a legally-binding agreement.
“We say we want to know more about such an agreement before we commit,” Pershing said.
Earlier, Christiana Figueres, who heads the UN’s climate change treaty system, also skated over responding to a suggestion that the US could break the logjam in climate negotiations if it was prepared to make the first move in reducing its climate-warming gases.
“There is no doubt that there is not one single country which can put up a solution to the problem. It affects every country big and small. Everyone has to contribute to putting a solution on the table,” Figueres said. - Cape Times