The latest round of UN climate change talks will probably beremembered as the final resting place of the Kyoto protocol on climate change,done in by longstanding financial woes and a lack of engagement by the UnitedStates. As negotiators here grappled with developing a new framework to go intoeffect by 2020, the talks wound down with no agreement on the key issues offinancing and carbon permits, amid an atmosphere of disappointment andacrimony.
Climate talks usually drag on beyond their scheduled end, inhopes of a last-minute breakthrough. The Doha round is no exception, butnegotiators are not optimistic. The selection of Qatar as the host site forthis year’s installment of the annual talks may have been their strangestaspect. The small, Middle Eastern peninsula has the highest per-capitagreenhouse gas emissions in the world, having become rich exporting the fossilfuels scientists blame as the main culprits for climate change. Eager to hostthe meetings with an eye toward promoting Qatar as a destination for majorconferences, however, the country won an aggressive battle to hold the talksagainst South Korea.
The massive new Qatar National Convention Centre drew ravereviews, together with a Qatari “paperless” initiative that included distributionof documents on free flash drives. Organizers say they helped save 92 percentof the paper used for last year’s meeting ” 2 million sheets of paper, or 250trees. However, none of that translated into progress on the negotiating floor,where the Qataris drew fire for failing to show leadership of the flounderingproceedings. The main prize is a new, universal agreement on reducing emissionsthat would be finalized in 2015 and include some form of participation from allcountries.
Former US President George W. Bush abandoned the Kyototreaty in 2001, and the process never recovered from the withdrawal of theworld’s largest economy. After Hurricane Sandy brought the effects of climatechange into the spotlight by battering the United States in late October,however, international hopes surged that the Americans would arrive in Dohaprepared to engage. In his first post-election news conference, PresidentBarack Obama said Americans should expect to “hear more from me in the comingmonths and years about how we can… move this [climate change] agenda forward.”But US climate envoy Todd Stern quickly tempered expectations, warning on hisfirst day in Doha that there was “no change in tone” in Washington. His stanceprompted angry reactions from many corners. “The reality is that the U.S.negotiators here have become nothing more than a stumbling block,” GreenpeaceInternational director Kumi Naidoo said.
Together with criticism of US inaction, finance issues havebecome a standard part of the climate process. In Copenhagen in 2009,negotiators agreed to create a Green Climate Fund that would raise at least$100 billion per year by 2020 to help poor countries adapt to the impact ofclimate change. This year, the most vulnerable countries called for at least$60 billion to be available by 2015. However, it’s far from clear how thetarget will be met. Amid the global economic crisis, no wealthy countries havemade significant pledges to the fund so far and none of the “innovative”sources of funding discussed since 2009 are ready to go into force. “What weare missing here is political will,” said Pa Ousman, a representative from thebloc of least developed countries. “There is no point for us to have celebratedthe promises made if the promises are not kept.”
The Kyoto protocol commits a dwindling number of wealthycountries into cutting emissions and helping poor countries develop cleanenergy. The current list has been reduced to just Europe and Australia,together responsible for just 14 percent of the world’s greenhouse gasemissions. The new system will require rich and poor countries to share theeffort. But it’s far from clear how that will happen. Under the Kyoto protocol,countries were assigned free carbon permits to allow industries to pollute. Butassigning the “hot air” permits financial values for trading ” making somecountries unwilling to reduce them ” has undercut the drive to cut emissionsfurther. Failure to agree on a new deal this year will probably result in arise in emissions.
