Backstage skirmish over climate change

THE climate change clock is ticking away relentlessly but the momentum built up over the past year seems to be fizzling out. It appears to be back to business as usual for most of the world leaders as climate change is put on the back burner, causing a sense of panic to descend on environment campaigners.

Now, with Yvo de Boer, the Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) — the UN's top official on climate change — tendering his resignation further hiccups may be on the horizon, seeing that he had been at the helm of the secretariat since 2006 behind efforts to bring together the world's nations to carve out an agreement.

The lofty promises of the 193-nation December summit in Copenhagen did not climax in a history-making Copenhagen climate treaty. Despite high expectations in the build-up to the meeting, it only produced two working group reports that were adopted by the UNFCCC and a three-page "Copenhagen Accord", hastily put together by the United States, China, South Africa, Brazil and India on the last day of the summit.

Of course, the accord — largely defined by its voluntary nature — has no legal standing under UNFCCC but still, in the absence of any agreement at the Copenhagen talks, could have been a signpost to a deal which would herald deep long-term cuts with the aim of keeping the rise in global temperatures below two degrees C, the benchmark for preventing catastrophic consequences.

As of now, close to 60 countries, most of them developed nations, have "associated" themselves with the accord but the voluntary goals promised are far below that required to keep global temperature from rising above the crucial two degrees C. In fact, scientific calculations based on the accord's pledges have come up a four-degree C temperature rise, one that is bound to have devastating ramifications.

It now appears that there is an undercurrent of movement taking place, with the US and the European Union throwing their weight behind the accord to be used as the premise for a new deal on climate change while most of the developing world want the UN's working group report to be used as the basis of a new agreement.

So, it was a relief that China, one of the prime movers of the accord, threw its support for the UN's working group reports, saying that only these have any legal basis for negotiations to proceed. Obviously, China, while recognising the significance of the accord does not want it to supercede the UNFCCC documents.

World leaders need to get their act together with more haste. Two new scientific studies hint that it may already be too late to contain the temperature rise to below two degrees C. As Greenpeace's international executive director, Kumi Naidoo, said: "The world is facing a crisis of leadership on climate change. Averting climate change has just gotten a whole lot harder."

While the world awaits a new deal, the Arctic is melting away and millions of homes continue to face the threat of being submerged from rising sea levels. Even the present 0.8 degrees C of warming has given rise to fear that there may be no sea ice in the summer in just five to 10 years' time. And once a warmer Arctic begins to emit large volumes of carbon and methane that are stored in frozen soils called permafrost, the nightmare will have truly begun, causing global heating to turn rogue.

If nothing else, Copenhagen had clearly exposed the gaping divide between the poor and rich countries, with the poor wanting the developed nations to commit themselves to legally-binding deep cuts in carbon emissions, something the industrialised countries are loath to do. Hopefully, a legally binding treaty will be thrashed out by year-end in Mexico.