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By Yu Shujun: 0 Comment(s)Print E-mail Beijing Review, December 20, 2012

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Unexpected result in Doha [By Jiao Haiyang/China.org.cn]

Low ambitions

Although the second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol was adopted in Doha, participating countries set their emission reduction target at only 18 percent. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's Fourth Assessment Report in 2007, developed economies as a group will have to reduce emissions by 25-40 percent from 1990 levels to keep temperature rises within an acceptable range.

The EU insisted on the 20-percent target of emission reduction by 2020 compared to 1990 levels, and reiterated its conditional offer to move to 30 percent, provided that other developed countries commit themselves to comparable emission reduction and that developing countries contribute adequately according to their responsibilities and respective capabilities.

Australia agreed to unconditionally reduce its emissions by only 5 percent by 2020 from 2000 levels and set conditions for a rise to 15-25 percent.

Japan, Canada, New Zealand and Russia even walked away from the second period of the Kyoto Protocol.

The United States, not a party to the Kyoto Protocol, previously set its emission reduction target at 17 percent by 2020 from 2005 levels, which equals to a cut of only about 3-4 percent below 1990 levels.

"Current pledges are clearly not enough to guarantee the temperature will stay below the 2-degree increase," said Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.

The latest World Bank report also alerted that the global temperature will increase 4 degrees centigrade or more by the end of this century, unless urgent actions are taken.

Insufficient funds

Financing is of great importance to support developing countries in their actions to address climate change.

Without financial support, technology transfers and cooperation tackling climate change cannot be realized, said Xie at a press conference in Doha on December 5.

According to calculations of some international organizations, developing countries need about $1 trillion to improve their climate change adaptation capabilities, said Xie.

But the reality is that the $30-billion fast-start fund from 2010 to 2012 will soon expire. Uncertainties loom over a scale-up of the aid to $100 billion per year by 2020 from crisis-stricken developed countries.

Financing was among the important issues on which parties failed to reach an agreeable outcome, said Su Wei, China's chief climate negotiator, at the closing plenary of the Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-term Cooperative Action at the Doha conference on December 7.

The extraordinarily weak result on climate financing fails to put any money on the table or ensure a pathway to the target of $100 billion a year by 2020, said CAN-I in a press release.

The decision asks for submissions from governments on long-term financing pathways and calls for public funds for adaptation, but does not mention a solid figure, and it encourages developed countries to maintain funding at existing levels dependent on their economies, according to the CAN-I.

Doha had done nothing to guarantee that public climate financing would go up next year, not down, said Tim Gore, International Climate Change Policy Advisor for Oxfam, a global anti-poverty organization.

Su also underscored the need for a goal for the 2013-15 phase in order to avoid gaps and ensure sufficient financial support for developing countries.

At the Doha conference, developing countries proposed that developed counterparts raise $20 billion per year between 2013 and 2015 as a mid-term climate fund.

"In Doha, countries have begun to make commitments totaling over $6 billion, mostly from European countries and the EU," said Figueres.

But developed countries as a whole did not make clear mid-term financing commitments for the 2013-15 period. Moreover, the amount is far from enough.

"We expect that funding will be bolstered by fresh pledges," Figueres said. "The world has the financial capability and the technical knowledge to tackle the issue, but governments need to take more decisive action."

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