World nations are striving to reach a groundbreaking international deal to prevent the worst effects of global climate change, when they meet at a UN conference in Copenhagen at the end of the year.
The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) will host its 15th Conference of the Parties (COP15) in December. Member states aim to agree on a master plan to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions to prevent dangerous global temperature rises of more than 2˚C and extreme weather events from occuring, which may leave parts of the world uninhabitable.
Negotiations will focus on adaptation to and mitigation of climate change effects. Ultimately, nations will agree on a deal which will replace the Kyoto Protocol, a set of binding targets which have required 37 of the most industrialised nations to cut greenhouse gas emissions between 2008 and 2012.
In the lead up to COP15 many world leaders are stressing the criticality of securing an international deal at the conference. Preliminary talks have raised uncertainty as to whether developing nations and emerging economies such as China will agree to make the necessary cuts.
“This is make or break time for our climate and our future,” says UK Energy and Climate Change Secretary, Ed Miliband. “The world’s got no option but to work together to get a global climate deal that’s ambitious, effective and fair.”
The UK is one of the world leaders in tackling climate change after having introduced its legally binding Climate Change Act last year. Along with the EU, the UK has agreed to cut emissions by 20% on 1990 levels by 2020, increasing this to 30% if a global deal is reached at Copenhagen.
Despite Europe’s stringent measures to cut emissions, efforts will be futile if a global deal is not met, warn experts. Emissions from the biggest global polluters, such as the US and China would counteract any other emissions cuts if they did not stop polluting.
Robert Watson, Chief Scientific Adviser to the UK Department for Environment, Farming and Rural Affairs (Defra) and former chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), says action by the US is paramount in encouraging emerging nations to join negotiations and thus securing a global deal in Copenhagen.
“No one will do anything if the US doesn’t really get on board,” says Watson. US President Barack Obama has agreed to cut emissions by 20% from current levels, resulting in a 3-5% cut on 1990 levels.
“You have Europe at least 20% below, you have the US on 3-5% below, the question is: is that enough to bring India and China to the table?” asks Watson. He confesses to not having the answer, but stresses that cooperation from China and India is crucial in the fight against climate change.
China, the world’s largest polluter of carbon dioxide, is hugely reliant on coal. As the world’s fastest emerging economy, China believes it has a right to raise living standards and urbanize as developed nations have done, a recent LA Times article states.
For this reason Watson believes that China may instead be encouraged to agree to a rate of improvement, as opposed to a hard target to reduce emissions. China has showed interest in adopting new clean coal technologies currently being created by the West. They therefore may agree to reduce their carbon intensity, says Watson.
A second factor potentially standing in the way of a global deal is the level of support offered to developing nations, some of which will be the worst hit by climate change.
“Climate change is a development issue,” says Douglas Alexander, the UK Development Secretary. “It is the world’s poorest people that are most vulnerable to the rising sea levels and extreme weather that a changing climate will bring.”
The UK wants to see developed nations agree to offer climate change adaptation aid to developing countries as part of a COP15 deal. The UK’s Road to Copenhagen document stresses that this should be additional to the 0.7% of aid developed nations are already required to give.
The recent annual summit meeting of the Group of Eight in L’Aquila, Italy exposed a potential hurdle in reaching such an agreement. Emerging nations refused to agree to cut emissions by 50% by 2050, calling instead for developed nations to commit to the financial and technological aid they had promised, reported the International Herald Tribune recently.
Watson says that cooperation from developing nations is highly reliant on a number of issues.
“Firstly, the industrialised world needs to show it’s genuinely serious in reducing emissions,” he says. As well as financial aid he believes that, “there may need to be some level on a deal on technology transfer, at least to share experiences with technology.
“I would imagine there is a call from many developing countries on capacity building, that is, having the technological, institutional and human capacity to deal with climate change,” he says.
Development charity, Oxfam, is keen to see governments making binding commitments to adaptation aid. Ken Smith, an Oxfam representative challenges the UK on being a self-confessed leader in climate change.
“Being world leader on climate change is not very great if the world hasn’t gone very far,” says Smith. “The government could start putting some real money where their mouth is.”
Other prominent issue that will be brought to the table at Copenhagen are limiting deforestation, reducing the impact of aviation on the climate and improving emissions trading, which allows nations to buy and sell ‘carbon credits’ based on whether or not they have exceeded their pollution limits as set out by the Kyoto Protocol.
The overall aim of negotiations at Copenhagen is to reduce global temperature rise to no more than 2˚C, or 3.6˚F. A recent report by the UK weather centre, the Met Office, projects some of the drastic changes that will occur if temperature increase is not curbed.
A temperature rise of 2˚C is already unavoidable due to emissions to date. The Met Office Climate Change Projections states that in the UK this change will see an increase of heat-related deaths, higher frequency of extreme weather events, such as flooding, dramatic changes to wildlife and a strain on current infrastructure.
However, Defra scientist, Watson, stresses that “the UK doesn’t have the ability to ensure they keep temperatures down, they are only about 4% or less of global emissions,” highlighting the need for a global deal on climate change.
The world is currently on a pathway to reach 400-450 parts per million (ppm) of greenhouse gasses, which will increase temperatures by 2˚C, explains Watson.
“However, unless the world truly acts almost immediately and has emissions peak around 2015-2017, we are potentially more likely to be on a path to 550ppm, which would stabalise at 3˚C,” warns Watson.
“All the UK can do is do as much as it can domestically to reduce emissions and advocate very strongly the rest of the world cutting back on emissions,” Watson says. “The UK could show leadership by actually demonstrating by changing the way we produce and use energy and show that it is actually economically viable.
“That’s the UK’s challenge,” he says.
