Rich nations play hide and seek in climate change deal
Kenya is expected to be hard hit by the effects of climate change as the reality that industrialised nations are scuttling efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, or the transfer of technology and finance from rich to poorer nations for adaptation and mitigation dawns.
The ministry of Environment and that of Wildlife have an ambitious joint Sh80 billion 20- year project to mitigate and adapt to climate change.
Investments on this scale can only take place if private players and donor financing are attracted. The government has only recently sought external assistance to put back forest cover in the Mau.
The UN climate change negotiations that ended October 9 in Bangkok largely failed to deliver any substantive progress on targets on those issues leading to serious questions about the political commitment of the industrialised nations.
Follow speeches
“Last month, President Barack Obama, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and other leaders of industrialised nations lined up to pledge their commitment to tackling climate change and reaching an effective agreement on how to do this when UN negotiations end in Copenhagen in December,” said Dr Saleemul Huq, a senior fellow in the climate change group at the International Institute for Environment.
“This gave the world high expectations for the international negotiation session that has run for the past two weeks in Bangkok,” he said. “But it seems like the negotiators from industrialised nations either didn’t follow their leaders’ speeches or haven’t received any new instructions because in virtually every aspect of the talks, there has been minimal progress of any substance.”
Take advantage
In December, governments will converge in Copenhagen to formulate a new treaty that will provide benchmarks for the reduction of green house gases.
The Government of Kenya hopes to take advantage of the UN conference on climate change to attract international financing for an ambitious scheme.
Environment minister John Michuki says that Kenya will be expecting an equitable and effective global climate deal that would apply the principle that the polluter pays.
Among other consequences of climate change in Kenya has been the declining rainfall, which in turn has led to lower resources for hydropower and scarcity of water for agriculture and domestic consumption.
The G77/China group of 132 developing nations says that the EU is trying to “divide and conquer” the developing nations and detract attention from their own broken promises.
There has been virtually no progress on new targets for developed nations that are party to the Kyoto Protocol to cut their emissions, despite their being legally bound to agree to new targets.
The G77/China group says the United States and the European Union stand accused of trying to kill the Kyoto Protocol, the only legal agreement that commits signatory nations to reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases. The EU as a party to the protocol is legally bound to agree to new targets for a post-2012 period.
In the negotiations focusing on ways to tackle climate change by reducing deforestation, the EU has removed a provision that would prevent conversion of natural forests to plantations thus threatening biodiversity and forest-dependent people.
Only Norway announced that it would increase its pledge to cut emissions by 40 per cent of their 1990 level by 2020. This is an increase from their earlier pledge of 30 per cent cut.
“One area of hope is that countries are now reaching an agreement that adaptation is essential to protect people and economies in the developing nations,” Dr Huq said.
“Negotiators made some good progress on adaptation to climate change, assuming that money will be available to do it. But the big questions yet to be answered are: how much money will developed nations provide and how will it be channelled to make adaptation a reality.”
The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change binds rich countries like the United States and European Union member states to provide funding to developing nations to adapt to and mitigate climate change.
“In Africa, as in many poor countries, per capita industrial greenhouse gas emissions are negligible compared with those of the developed world as well as China and India. Yet the least developed countries stand to be climate change’s biggest victims with the least capacity and means to adapt,” said Prof Wangari Maathai, the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate.
Prof Maathai, who is the founder of the Green Belt Movement and the goodwill ambassador for the Congo Basin Rainforest Ecosystem, said to this end, a “green deal” on climate for the least developed countries, most of which are in Africa, is needed.
Such a pact should support development of green technology, particularly for energy, and provide new sources of funds for mitigation and adaptation.
Standing forests serve as the planet’s carbon sinks and “lungs.” She said that approximately 20 per cent of total emissions of carbon dioxide, the major greenhouse gas, result from deforestation and forest degradation.
Up to 34 billion tonnes of carbon are trapped in the forests of the Congo Basin Ecosystem alone.
Scientists predict that as the temperature rises, soils in the tropics will dry up. Trees and forests could die on a vast scale, and fresh water will be less available. The rivers leaving Kenya’s Mau forest, which replenish many lakes including those essential to the tourism industry, are drying up.
The world hopes that in Copenhagen governments will be guided by the realities of available scientific evidence, and act accordingly.
Kenya is among the countries to benefit from new incentive mechanisms such as reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD), which should also address degradation of agricultural land.
REDD would compensate developing countries for environmental services provided by indigenous forests left standing.
