The Seventeenth Conference of the Parties (COP 17) is scheduled to be held from November 28 to December 9 of this year in Durban. Much hype and expectation has already grown centring this. It bears paramount importance for us as Bangladesh is believed to be the worst-affected country, in terms of the sheer human toll, by climate change-induced disasters and problems. This underscores the necessity and importance of this conference, as it could prove to be the last concerted effort on the part of developing countries like Bangladesh to exert their influence on the course climate change negotiations take in the coming years.
Realising climate change as a real monster unshackled by nature itself, the inhabitants of earth woke up to this danger and took the first concrete initiative back in 1992. Countries around the world joined hands in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). From 1995 onwards there were annual meetings in the form of the Conferences of the Parties (COP) for assessing progress in dealing with climate change. Then the legally binding obligations for developed countries to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions came into effect in 1997 with the conclusion of Kyoto Protocol.
Now there was a real hope for bold action from industrialised countries, the major culprit to be blamed for letting cut loose of this demon. But the materialist desire of capitalism was not to be weaned in the face of any threat. With its increasing dependence on fossil-fuel technology, it becomes almost impossible for these countries to take action against climate change. That is why major developed countries like the US always opposed any legally binding emission of GHG. This is equally true for other industrially developed countries. It was expected that COP 16 in Cancun last year would result in commitments and targets for reducing GHG—the particle which unleashed this monster. But that expectation never came to see the end of the tunnel. As the Kyoto Protocol is coming to an end in 2012, there is no scope for any further ado because, if CO2 emissions are allowed to continue unabated for the next twenty years, the climate system will cross a tipping point beyond which global warming begins to feed on itself and becomes essentially irreversible and unmanageable.
If earth’s temperature increases by 3-4 degree celcius, this warming will deal a catastrophic blow to ecosystems, species, human infrastructures, societies and livelihoods. But what in reality has happened is the opposite of our expectation. During the Nineties, the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere accelerated to its fastest rate ever recorded. The global climate conditions also at the same time deteriorated with great speed. Add to this the projection of The International Energy Agency which says that on current trends, GHG emissions will increase by 100 per cent by 2050 which could push our environment past several critical tipping points (IEA, 2008). This means that whatever we do from then on will count as valueless, even if we become able to stop GHG emissions completely at or after that time.
So why is it so tough for us to come to an agreement which would ensure reduction of GHG emission to a globally acceptable level? It is the very human desire of living a pompous, techno-savvy life which in turn requires more industrialisation and thus rapid build-up of emitted gas. Capitalism, the present order of the world, has no room for protection of our climate, because it allows the market mechanism to be the “sole director of the fate of human beings and their natural environment” which “would result in the demolition of society . . . Nature would be reduced to its elements, neighbourhoods and landscapes defiled, rivers polluted, military safety jeopardized, the power to produce food and raw materials destroyed . . . . “. The economics underlying this mechanism doesn’t account for the external costs of these activities and the invisible hand of the market never takes this into account. This is why we see the industrialised developed countries are the biggest polluters.
One major breakthrough came at COP 16 as the world leaders in principle agreed not to exceed the world temperature by 2 degree celcius. In the Cancun Agreements, one major weakness remained as for the most part, there were agreements on what the goals were, but no guideline on how to achieve these goals. This was largely due to the differing opinions of the US, Russia, Japan etc. and other developing countries.
In the last conference in Cancun, Australia and Bangladesh paired to discuss on finance, technology and capacity building. This resulted in a positive development as there was a commitment to deliver $100bn (the global cost needed per year for mitigating and adapting to climate change) in climate finance per year by 2020.
With the negative attitude of the US towards COP 17, any concrete, legally binding and environmentally beneficial decisions will be hard to make. These countries’ apathy towards climate change gets clear when we consider their adoption of industrial bio-fuels, which they promoted as a sustainable energy option and caused a food crisis by taking land and food crops for producing renewable feedstock. Again the activities under the Kyoto Protocol were not also without controversies as over 90 per cent of the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) carbon offset projects involved “the appropriation [of] someone else’s land, someone else’s water or someone else’s future”.
So an effective solution to climate change can’t come in the form of a single solution but in the form of a miasma of solutions tuned to the benefits of different interest groups. So which strategy should Bangladesh pursue or what should be its prioritised agenda when developed countries in one way or another continue to emit unabated? There are many issues which on their own merits can be prioritised. But given the hard reality, the Green Climate Fund seems to be the one it should stress most, as it would be through this scheme that Bangladesh could claims funds to adapt to the future adverse situations, and help to some extent in mitigating GHG emissions. We need to act now, so that this monster can be induced to sleep before it wreaks havoc.
Shammunul Islam is a development researcher.