Published by: The Jakarta Post, 16 July 2008
The recent G8 joint communique on climate change, through which G8 nations have agreed to halve global greenhouse emissions by 2050, has raised questions over the future of global efforts to fight climate change and its impact on the environment and humanity.
The G8 leaders claim the agreement is an "important and significant step forward in the efforts" to tackle global warming. Some environmental groups sharply criticize the communique as it falls short of expectations by failing to set medium term targets.
The world's economic powers, particularly the United States, responded, claiming the intergovernmental negotiations represented progress though they lacked commitments from other dominant emitters, particularly the emerging economic powers, China and India.
But the G8 countries rejected the notion they slash their emissions even further because the wealthier countries have been responsible for the bulk of the historical emissions which have led to today's environmental damage.
They said their emission rate per capita is far below average among developed nations and they wanted to uphold the principle of economic development for their people.
Current rifts over the best possible approach to addressing global warming have widened even farther, and new political standoffs between developed and developing nations are likely. Intergovernmental negotiations, which had converged due to the ratifications of the Kyoto Protocol by some important nations, most notably Russia and Australia, appear to diverge once more.
The principle of "common but differentiated responsibilities" between developed and developing countries will probably not continue to hold sway. According to this principle, these two groups -- due to their different shares of historical and current global emissions, emissions per capita and stages of development -- are subject to mandates with different commitments.
The wealthier, dubbed Annex I, nations, are required to reduce their collective emissions by 5 percent compared with their 1990 emissions, while the others are not obliged to meet such quantitative commitments. Even without them, developing countries share in the common responsibility to slash emissions; at least they must establish an integrated inventory system to track their emissions.
Climate change negotiations might develop into one of the two following regimes. The first one, the least common denominator regime, follows the "business as usual" scenario: the United States would continue to oppose any agreement which only puts reduced emissions targets on developed nations, notwithstanding the global call for across-the-board cuts from such developed counterparts as Germany and France. This scenario recognizes the rights of developing world to develop themselves, which suggests that they might disregard their emission levels in the development phase.
Under this "least common denominator" climate change regime, no parties are willing to sacrifice any of their interests. Under this regime, current emission patterns would be unlikely to change much, posing real problems, as the scientific community points out the unprecedented impact of the increase in global temperatures by 2 degrees Celsius by 2050.
On the other hand, a "partially leveled playing field" climate regime might emerge. If we consider the common understanding on the magnitude of the problems associated with climate change, the different historical and current emissions patterns as well as the development status of different nations, intergovernmental negotiations might well continue to pursue a just solution for both groups, namely, that the cost of halting global warming would be fairly shared among nations.
Under this regime, developed nations would be required to meet quantitative emission reductions in the near future, not by 2050 as promised in the new G8 communique.
Developing nations would be allowed to continue promoting their economic development, but only over a limited period, say 20 years. During that period, their emissions will be expected to peak before starting to decline, eventually helping to stabilize global temperatures at a level that would not lead to unimaginable adverse impacts.
This regime might provide win-win solutions for both groups, developed and developing countries, as well as for the welfare of people and the environment.
The writer is a lecturer at Gadjah Mada University and a PhD candidate at Goettingen University, Germany. The article is a personal opinion. He can be reached at amaryud@gwdg.de
No comments:
Post a Comment