Nations should scale down ambitions for a global climate deal in Copenhagen in December rather than have "exaggerated expectations," India's minister of state for environment and forests said on Saturday.
Jairam Ramesh said climate talks in Bangkok, which ended on Friday, had left a big gap in trust between developing and industrialized nations.
"We have to be realistic, we have to be pragmatic," Ramesh said. "We should not derail Copenhagen by having exaggerated expectations. Let us clinch those elements of the deal that we can clinch."
He said countries may need to come back to Copenhagen after December to reach a wider deal.
India insists it will not accept binding greenhouse gas emissions cuts but will adopt nationally appropriate mitigation actions.
Ramesh suggested instead of binding emissions cuts, governments should now focus on agreeing on three main areas: finance for adaptation to climate change, a deal to combat deforestation and promote forestation, and technology sharing.
"Even the United States is in agreement on these three issues," Ramesh told an editors' meeting in the Danish capital with 57 days left until about 190 governments are due to convene the U.N. climate change conference there on December 7-18, seeking a deal to replace the Kyoto Protocol that expires in 2012.
Ramesh warned against what he called the "mistake of the Doha round" of trade talks. "The basic problem of the Doha round was 'all or nothing,'" he said. The trade talks began in 2001 and there is still no deal.
Ramesh said India would go a step beyond nationally appropriate mitigation actions, dubbed "NAMAs," and pass domestic legislation in areas such as fuel efficiency standards and possibly environmental building codes.
Ramesh blamed the European Union for abandoning the basic structure of the Kyoto Protocol and said it was up to the EU to bridge the lack of trust after the Bangkok talks.
The Kyoto pact contains binding emissions reductions targets for rich countries but does not include hard targets for developing countries.
"It is the European Union that has given the impression in Bangkok that it is ready to abandon the basic architecture of the Kyoto Protocol to accommodate the United States," he said.
"Recent events in Bangkok have cast a long shadow over what is going to happen in the Copenhagen negotiations," Ramesh said
Monday, October 12, 2009
India: Limited climate deal should focus on financing
India’s Minister of State for Environment and Forests Jairam Ramesh on Saturday urged nations to scale down ambitions for a global climate deal at December’s UN conference in Copenhagen rather than have “exaggerated expectations”.
"We have to be realistic, we have to be pragmatic," Ramesh said according to Reuters.
"We should not derail Copenhagen by having exaggerated expectations. Let us clinch those elements of the deal that we can clinch."
He said countries may need to come back to Copenhagen after December to reach a wider deal.
Instead of binding emissions cuts, Ramesh suggested governments should now focus on agreeing on three main areas: finance for adaptation to climate change, a deal to combat deforestation and promote forestation, and technology sharing.
"Even the United States is in agreement on these three issues," Ramesh told an international editors' meeting in the Danish capital.
Ramesh further blamed the European Union for abandoning the basic structure of the Kyoto Protocol at last week’s Bangkok talks and said it was up to the EU to bridge the lack of trust.
"It is the European Union that has given the impression in Bangkok that it is ready to abandon the basic architecture of the Kyoto Protocol to accommodate the United States," he said, adding:
"Recent events in Bangkok have cast a long shadow over what is going to happen in the Copenhagen negotiations."
"We have to be realistic, we have to be pragmatic," Ramesh said according to Reuters.
"We should not derail Copenhagen by having exaggerated expectations. Let us clinch those elements of the deal that we can clinch."
He said countries may need to come back to Copenhagen after December to reach a wider deal.
Instead of binding emissions cuts, Ramesh suggested governments should now focus on agreeing on three main areas: finance for adaptation to climate change, a deal to combat deforestation and promote forestation, and technology sharing.
"Even the United States is in agreement on these three issues," Ramesh told an international editors' meeting in the Danish capital.
Ramesh further blamed the European Union for abandoning the basic structure of the Kyoto Protocol at last week’s Bangkok talks and said it was up to the EU to bridge the lack of trust.
"It is the European Union that has given the impression in Bangkok that it is ready to abandon the basic architecture of the Kyoto Protocol to accommodate the United States," he said, adding:
"Recent events in Bangkok have cast a long shadow over what is going to happen in the Copenhagen negotiations."
Africa: Let the polluters pay
For the first time, Africa will present a common position and demand billions of dollars in compensation for the climate change damage that rich nations have caused.
"Policy-makers have to agree to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases and adhere to the principle that the polluter pays," African Union commission chairman Jean Ping told the seventh World Forum on Sustainable Development, held in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso this weekend.
At the UN climate conference in Copenhagen, "Africa will have a common position. We have decided to speak with one voice", and Africa will demand that "reparations and damages" should be paid by polluting countries, Ping said according to AFP.
On Friday, Burkina Faso's Environment Minister Salifou Sawadogo drew up the bill.
"We think 65 billion dollars are needed to deal with the effects of climate change on a continental scale. That is to say that our expectations are very high," Sawadogo said an added that "we are all on the same planet so there is a duty of solidarity to help the most vulnerable countries, like we are, implement policies to adapt to climate change."
According to AFP, Africans account for only four percent of global greenhouse gas emissions while the central Congo basin is considered one of the worlds "green lungs" together with the Amazon rain forest. In comparison, the US state of Texas "with 30 million inhabitants creates as much greenhouse gases as the billion Africans taken together," Sawadogo said.
The Ouagadougou meeting was attended by the presidents of Benin, Burkina Faso, Central African Republic, Congo, Mali and Togo.
"Policy-makers have to agree to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases and adhere to the principle that the polluter pays," African Union commission chairman Jean Ping told the seventh World Forum on Sustainable Development, held in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso this weekend.
At the UN climate conference in Copenhagen, "Africa will have a common position. We have decided to speak with one voice", and Africa will demand that "reparations and damages" should be paid by polluting countries, Ping said according to AFP.
On Friday, Burkina Faso's Environment Minister Salifou Sawadogo drew up the bill.
"We think 65 billion dollars are needed to deal with the effects of climate change on a continental scale. That is to say that our expectations are very high," Sawadogo said an added that "we are all on the same planet so there is a duty of solidarity to help the most vulnerable countries, like we are, implement policies to adapt to climate change."
According to AFP, Africans account for only four percent of global greenhouse gas emissions while the central Congo basin is considered one of the worlds "green lungs" together with the Amazon rain forest. In comparison, the US state of Texas "with 30 million inhabitants creates as much greenhouse gases as the billion Africans taken together," Sawadogo said.
The Ouagadougou meeting was attended by the presidents of Benin, Burkina Faso, Central African Republic, Congo, Mali and Togo.
Asia finds common ground on climate policy
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama and South Korean President Lee Myung Bak met this weekend in Beijing and pledged in a joint statement to “work closely together through strengthened dialogue” in order to push through a new global climate deal, Bloomberg reports.
Hatoyama, who took office last month, has made climate change a focus of his administration, pledging a 25 percent reduction in Japanese greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 compared to the baseline year of the Kyoto Protocol, 1990. China, the world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gasses, has so far refused to accept binding emissions targets.
"I know that China has some sort of domestic framework, but it is important for China to make an international commitment for the success of (Copenhagen)," Hatoyama told reporters according to Reuters, after a meeting with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao.
According to AFP, the leaders said that success would be based on ”the establishment of an effective post-2012 international co-operation framework on climate change, consistent with the principles of the UNFCCC, in particular common but differentiated responsibilities”.
At global climate talks in Bangkok last week, several nations - including the United States, Australia and Japan - tabled proposals calling for an approach in which each country would make its own national commitments.
Hatoyama, who took office last month, has made climate change a focus of his administration, pledging a 25 percent reduction in Japanese greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 compared to the baseline year of the Kyoto Protocol, 1990. China, the world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gasses, has so far refused to accept binding emissions targets.
"I know that China has some sort of domestic framework, but it is important for China to make an international commitment for the success of (Copenhagen)," Hatoyama told reporters according to Reuters, after a meeting with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao.
According to AFP, the leaders said that success would be based on ”the establishment of an effective post-2012 international co-operation framework on climate change, consistent with the principles of the UNFCCC, in particular common but differentiated responsibilities”.
At global climate talks in Bangkok last week, several nations - including the United States, Australia and Japan - tabled proposals calling for an approach in which each country would make its own national commitments.
Norway takes over the yellow climate jersey
By reducing the greenhouse gas emissions by as much as 40 percent by 2020 from 1990 levels, Norway has set the most ambitious target proposed by a developed nation. The country has already set a target of being carbon neutral by 2030.
According to AFP, the 40-percent target is part of the new political program presented by the leftist coalition of Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg.
“Norway will be a pioneer country when it comes to environmental policy,” Socialist Left leader and Finance Minister Kristin Halvorsen says in a statement posted on the government’s web site.
The Norwegian proposal “is the type of political will needed to move the climate talks forward to a strong deal in Copenhagen,” Greenpeace International Climate Policy Director, Martin Kaiser says in an e-mailed statement, according to Bloomberg.
According to AFP, the 40-percent target is part of the new political program presented by the leftist coalition of Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg.
“Norway will be a pioneer country when it comes to environmental policy,” Socialist Left leader and Finance Minister Kristin Halvorsen says in a statement posted on the government’s web site.
The Norwegian proposal “is the type of political will needed to move the climate talks forward to a strong deal in Copenhagen,” Greenpeace International Climate Policy Director, Martin Kaiser says in an e-mailed statement, according to Bloomberg.
As economy grows, so does China’s trash
isitors can smell this village long before they see it.
More than 100 dump trucks piled high with garbage line the narrow road leading to Zhanglidong, waiting to empty their loads in a landfill as big as 20 football fields.
In less than five years, the Zhengzhou Comprehensive Waste Treatment Landfill has overwhelmed this otherwise pristine village of about 1,000 people. Peaches and cherries rot on trees, infested with insect life drawn by the smell. Fields lie unharvested, contaminated by toxic muck. Every day, another 100 or so tons of garbage arrive from nearby Zhengzhou, a provincial capital of 8 million.
"Life here went from heaven to hell in an instant," says lifelong resident Wang Xiuhua, swatting away clouds of mosquitoes and flies. The 78-year-old woman suddenly coughs uncontrollably and says the landfill gases inflame her bronchitis.
As more Chinese ride the nation's economic boom, a torrent of garbage is one result. Cities are bursting at the seams, and their officials struggle to cope.
The amount of paper, plastic and other garbage has more than tripled in two decades to about 300 million tons a year, according to Nie Yongfeng, a waste management expert at Beijing's Tsinghua University.
‘No place to put it all’
Americans are still way ahead of China in garbage; a population less than a quarter the size of China's 1.3 billion generated 254 million tons of garbage in 2007, a third of which is recycled or composted, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Americans are still way ahead of China in garbage; a population less than a quarter the size of China's 1.3 billion generated 254 million tons of garbage in 2007, a third of which is recycled or composted, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
But for China, the problem represents a rapid turnabout from a generation ago, when families, then largely rural and poor, used and reused everything.
"Trash was never complicated before, because we didn't have supermarkets, we didn't have fancy packaging and endless things to buy," said Nie. "Now suddenly, the government is panicking about the mountains of garbage piling up with no place to put it all."
In Zhanglidong, villagers engage in shouting matches with drivers and sometimes try to bodily block their garbage trucks coming from Zhengzhou, 20 miles away.
"Zhengzhou is spotless because their trash is dumped into our village," says Li Qiaohong, who blames it for her 5-year-old son's eczema.
‘Didn't know what a landfill was’
Li's family is one of a few who live within 100 meters (300 feet) of the landfill, separated from it by a fence. These families get 100 yuan ($15) a month in government compensation.
Li's family is one of a few who live within 100 meters (300 feet) of the landfill, separated from it by a fence. These families get 100 yuan ($15) a month in government compensation.
The dump has poisoned not just the air and ground, but relationships. Villagers say they were never consulted, and suspect their Communist Party officials were paid to accept the landfill.
In China, especially in rural regions, there is often no recourse once local officials make a decision. The villagers say not only were their petitions ignored, but they were warned by the Zhengzhou police to stop protesting or face punishment.
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Protests in some cities
Elsewhere, thousands of farmers in the central province of Hubei clashed with police last year over illegal dumping near their homes. A person filming the clash died after being beaten by police.
Elsewhere, thousands of farmers in the central province of Hubei clashed with police last year over illegal dumping near their homes. A person filming the clash died after being beaten by police.
Protests in cities are driving trash to the countryside.
Residents in central Beijing swarmed the offices of the Ministry of Environment last year, protesting the stench from a landfill and plans for a new incinerator there. In July, officials scrapped the incinerator plan and closed the landfill four years early.
In eastern Beijing, local officials invested millions of dollars to make the Gao An Tun landfill and incinerator one of a handful in China to meet global health standards. That was after 200,000 residents petitioned for a year about the smell.
"Our standard of living is improving, so it's natural that more and more of us begin to fight for a better quality of life," says Zhang Jianhua, 67, one of the petitioners
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