Tensions in the United Nations reflected the brooding humidity outside the conference room in Bangkok this week, as climate change talks between developing and developed countries ground to an acrimonious deadlock.
No deal was expected at the talks, which ended on Friday, and negotiators will have to slug it out again in a month’s time in Barcelona before the big meeting in Copenhagen at year-end. Just a week of formal negotiations remain before Copenhagen — and delegates were feeling the pressure.
South Africa’s delegation was in a sombre mood. ”In the current climate a deal in Copenhagen will be extremely difficult,” said South African negotiator Joanne Yawitch.
South Africa was firmly in the corner of the G77-plus-China group, which represents 130 mainly developing countries.
Differences came to a head when developed countries indicated they want to replace the Kyoto Protocol with a different treaty that would require developing countries to give more ground on emissions.
The G77 objected that the new proposals discarded the Bali Action Plan negotiated two years ago. South Africa argued hard that the negotiations should stick to that framework.
Yawitch complained that the proposals by the United States, Canada, Australia and the European Union placed the new climate treaty in jeopardy.
”There is a threat that if Kyoto gets revamped, as the EU wants, that negotiations will collapse,” she warned.
Kyoto instructs rich countries to limit emissions to combat climate change, as they are historically responsible for emitting the most greenhouse gases. Developing countries were originally excluded from Kyoto because committing to emission targets would jeopardise their economies.
Several developed countries said their developed counterparts were trying to ”murder” the protocol, and even UN staffers expressed disappointment that the latter had departed from the Bali mandate.
Lumumba Di-Aping, the Sudanese chairperson of the G77, said the Bangkok encounter made it clear that developed countries wanted a deal outside Kyoto. Yu Qingtai, China’s special envoy for climate change, echoed this, alleging ”sabotage”. He accused the rich countries of throwing an equitable deal out of the window.
The US, which has not signed Kyoto, wants to move away from a legally binding international agreement with specific time frames to one in which individual states will determine emissions policy.
Jonathan Pershing, the US’s deputy special envoy for climate change, said there is still room for an international agreement, but that countries will have to shoulder more responsibilities through national legislation.
”An international agreement is good because it would support the national frameworks,” he said.
EU negotiator Karl Falkenberg denied that the EU wanted to kill Kyoto, saying the proposed changes would strengthen the treaty.
”Developing countries will be financed by developed countries to cut emissions,” he said.
The proposed new agreement would put a much heavier onus on developing countries to cut emissions. The US proposed a long-term global target of an 80% reduction for developed countries by 2050 and 50% for the G8. It did not say what target it would commit to.
Sudan objected that this would mean reduced economic growth in Africa.
Instead, the G77 pushed for developed countries to slash emissions by 95% reduction by 2050.
Tasneem Essop, WWF South Africa’s climate advocate, said there were no ministers or political heads at the Bangkok negotiations and negotiators had little room to manoeuvre outside their mandates.
”Negotiators must now return to their countries to get new mandates for Barcelona,” she said.
Floods, drought, dead fish
While officials argued in Bangkok this week, farmers and fishermen from across Africa told a forum in Cape Town a chillingly consistent tale of cyclical floods and droughts.
Caroline Malema, a Malawian farmer and mother of six, told the Pan-African Climate Change and Poverty Hearings of the flooding in her region in March 2007. ”In the night we just heard a big noise coming from the river and people were crying ‘Water, water!’ In the morning when we went to the river we saw that everything had been swept away and the cattle had been killed,” she said.
The villagers tried to replant but drought destroyed their harvest and, with no options for income or sustenance, many women resorted to prostitution. Now, says Malema, HIV infection is rife in the region and there are many Aids orphans.
Sydney le Fleur, a honeybush farmer and manager of the Ericaville Farming Trust near Plettenberg Bay, had a similar tale to tell. In the past few years the rainy season has shifted from August to the end of the year. Then, in 2007, they got twice the rainfall they usually get in August in just a few days.
”Houses on the riverbank were swept away. Caravan parks on the lagoon just disappeared overnight. The horses in the polo estates drowned in their stables,” he said.
Then came the drought. ”In January we started praying for rain.” The tourism and farming sectors in Plettenberg Bay groaned under the effects of destroyed infrastructure and water restrictions.
”My own understanding of climate change is limited. All I’m going to tell you is what I’ve observed of the sea,” said Ernest Titus, a fisherman from Lambert’s Bay.
His weathered face was impassive as he told of rising water temperatures, fierce currents, unpredictable wind and different species appearing in his fishing grounds.
”We just want to go to sea, catch fish and put money on the table — But the crayfish come out [of the water] dead and the snoek that you catch is soft and you can’t sell it at the market.”
Mark Tadross, a researcher with the University of Cape Town’s climate systems analysis group, said the rises in temperature, rainfall intensity and seasonal changes are consistent with scientists’ expectations of climate change. ”We can expect those kinds of impacts to continue and perhaps even worsen,” he said.
Tadross said that it is often easier to identify long-term trends in climate change than to identify short-term ones. International efforts, he said, have focused on modelling and predicting climatic change over the next 30 to 40 years, but there are new efforts to predict 10 or 20 years into the future.
In the absence of reliable short-term projections for specific regions, an intermediate step was to ”build up resilience to existing extremes”. The challenge is to translate scientific information into something that can be used by policymakers and planners, he said.
Charles Abani, director of Oxfam Southern Africa, said a rights-based approach to negotiations is needed.
”They’re not asking for handouts. They’re asking for an honest and just resolution to a global problem in a way that allows them to exercise their rights and live a life of dignity,” he said.
Despite grim reports of events in Bangkok, Abani remains hopeful. ”History has shown that the world responds in crisis and emergencies. The world has not been ready to hear this until now.
”The question is: have they heard it loud enough?” he said. — Faranaaz Parker